RSS
Economics
Banker to the Poor
 |
Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty |
This book is a good layperson introduction to the concept of microcredit and its Nobel Prize-winning champion, Muhammad Yunus. Unfortunately for me, it didn't get into the nuts and bolts of the Grameen microcredit model and why it produces inconsistent results when applied to different regions. However, that level of detail is probably not interesting to most readers, which is why Banker to the Poor is a little bit saccharine at times. Most of the chapters are anecdotes about saintly bank workers, poor but plucky Bangladeshi peasants and above all, Yunus's tireless networking and wasta-mongering with senior government officials.
Continue reading "Banker to the Poor"
Posted by eerie at 04:43 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
The Mystery of Capital
 |
The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else |
Hernando de Soto's brilliant (and surprisingly elegant) theories on extralegal property systems, dead capital and rentier/vampire states can easily be applied to any number of countries in the Middle East and North Africa. In fact, Aqoul once elaborated on his Egypt case study by examining Cairo's collapsing building problem in the context of weak property laws, poor accountability and nonexistent enforcement.
Continue reading "The Mystery of Capital"
Posted by eerie at 07:45 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age
 |
ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age |
The late Andre Gunder Frank was apparently regarded as bit of an iconoclast as a historian and economist and this volume certainly seems to fit the bill. In brief he takes the studies like Janet Abu-Lughod's and K.N. Chaudhuri's a step further and posits that up until ~1800 Europe was an economic backwater of relatively minor importance in an Asia dominated economic system.
Continue reading "ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age"
Posted by Tamerlane at 09:50 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean
 |
Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge Paperback Library) |
It has often been said that if Europe had decided to abruptly abandon its colonial possessions in 1750, it would have left few lasting reminders of its impact, other than a handful of rotting coastal stations and forts. This excellent volume, while it does succinctly chart the historical evolution of the Indian Ocean economic sphere in its first 60 pages, is really more focused of the period after the European expansion into the region, but before those outside powers became so entrenched as to be immovable.
As fascinating as the discussion on sea lanes, trade routes, emporia and trading commodities are, the most interesting discovery here are the many myths that are systematically debunked. In particular that the states fringing the Indian Ocean either failed to adapt or react to the European intrusion or that they indeed lacked the capacity to do so in the first place. To the contrary, Chaudhuri convincingly lays out that while there were some differences, many of the same economic forces were at work in the east as the west, leading to many parallel results, for example the increasing monetization of the economy. European advantages in ship-design and cannonry were swiftly copied (with some local variation) such that any technological advantages that, say, the Portuguese may have possessed early on soon became fairly moot. That Europe eventually triumphed in their advance east seems to have had much less to do with any technological superiority, than with their ability to exploit local politics to their best advantage.
Posted by Tamerlane at 08:53 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350
 |
Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 |
One in a series of more recent corrective works on the medieval world economy, Abu-Lughod here lays out a compelling case that the Dark Ages were less than dark outside of northern and western Europe. This is no longer a novel position, indeed there have been plenty of revisionist studies that point out that even in Europe the traditional notion of "the Dark Ages" has probably been overblown. Nonetheless this is a terrific introduction to the overlapping international economic structure in the middle ages and in particular how it was dominated by Asia during the Mongol age. It charts a series of subsystems and how they interacted, including such European centers as Flanders and northern Italy, but also rather more importantly at this time, the transit zones of the Middle East and the massively productive regions of south and east Asia.
Continue reading "Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350"
Posted by Tamerlane at 06:33 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery
 |
Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery (S U N Y Series in the Social and Economic History of the Middle East) |
The title here is perhaps just a bit of an overstatement. The "Age of Discovery" is variously defined, but it generally covers a rather broader span of time than this work is concerned with. The main focus here is the first decades of the 16th century, charting the complex political and economic interrelationships between the dominant Ottoman state, the badly declined Mamelukes, the rising Safavids in Persia and Venice, as they all jockeyed uneasily with each other and reacted to Portuguese expansionism in the Indian Ocean. But despite this narrow time frame, this is a very interesting study than attempts to address a broader theme. Brummett's primary thesis is that the Ottoman sultanate, contrary to the older view of a state interested primarily in land revenue and hence pure territorial aggrandizement, was a far more sophisticated player in the international trade market than it is usually given credit for. In her view control and participation in the Red Sea and Persian trade routes threatened by Portugal and the rise of Safavid Shi'ism, as well as economic investment in the Mediterranean grain trade, formed a major impetus to Ottoman diplomacy.
Continue reading "Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery"
Posted by Tamerlane at 08:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
