Global Value Chains, Multinational Corporations and Local Development

Below we have some suggestions for material that might help you bring different angles to these topics.  You can also search for further content and explore the wealth of fresh thinking in economics that The Mint brings or check out our topics page.

To access, you need to register here with your KCL email.

Colonial history

Follow the money

Self-styled comedian and economist, Susie Steed, tells how her guided walk around the City turned into a tour of the British Empire. I never set out to run a tour

Read More »

Global value chains

Atomic number one fuel

With the UK government and others announcing hydrogen strategies as part of their Net Zero plans, Jeremy Williams assesses the potential – and the pitfalls – of the first element.

Read More »
Selling the circular

Thinking out of the box: currently, retail is largely about mass, transactional relationships. Can business ever be good? Henry Leveson-Gower explores. A year ago I was on the hunt for examples

Read More »
All is revealed

Alessandra Mezzadri explains how productivity barely covers anything in fast-fashion prices. In April this year, the UK multi-channel retail brand Missguided advertised the sale of a £1 bikini. It was

Read More »

Trade

Talking Shop

Christopher Dent is an international political economist who has been observing how international institutions have talked the neo-liberal language on climate change, energy and environment for the past few decades. 

Read More »
Lost and Unfounded

The global trading system is broken says Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia. It is, he says, a politically, socially and economically unsustainable system designed for the 20th century and based on theories

Read More »

Foreign Direct Investment

Sovereign states on a leash

Foreign investment: Rick Rowden recounts the tale of who’s wagging the dog.   When Mexico adopted a tax on high-fructose corn syrup as part of an effort to address the

Read More »

Labour

Workers byte back

Cross-border brands feel the heat from digitally organised labour. Grazia Ietto-Gillies  explains. In 2014 the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) declared that in some 43 labour disputes filed since

Read More »
Bots and bell ringing

Richard Baldwin is a leading international expert and author on globalisation. In his most recent book, he writes about the coming age of “globotics”, an even more intense globalisation plus

Read More »
A hole in the heart

Grazia Ietto-Gillies has spent her career as an economist seeking to fill a crucial gap: the exclusion of transnational corporations into economic thinking.  And this gap is not a small

Read More »

Gender

Farming: a woman’s work

Yashaswi Shetty and Hamza Ahmad, describe how women in India’s agricultural sector are pushing back barriers to their recognition and security. Surinder Kaur is a member of the Kisan Sabha

Read More »
Plumbers and pedagogues

Does development always eliminate gender discrimincation? Naila Kabeer scrutinises the thinking behind the recent Nobel prize-winning methodology in development economics. The 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to three

Read More »

Environment

All for One

A combination of government edicts, broken promises and climate change has driven Malian villagers away from their collective livelihoods and traditions to bring prosperity for the few, not for the

Read More »
Carbon dating

Getting together to reduce carbon emissions brings hope in a world that doesn’t care, say Colin Nolden and Michele Stua On first sight, the global climate conference in Madrid was a

Read More »
Trash can

Lagos’s garbage entrepreneurs are cleaning up. Adeyemi Adelekan explains. While growing up in a small suburban community in Lagos state, I was accustomed to hearing people with carts and sacks

Read More »

Corporate social responsibilty

The great pretenders

It’s time for the bosses to stop posing as helpers of disadvantaged groups and to just get out of their way. Patricia Gestoso offers directions. In 2013, the then chief

Read More »
Politics Is Good For You

Joe Zammit-Lucia warns that good intentions will rarely come to fruition without political understanding. In a seminal article titled Wealth, published in The North American Review in 1889, Andrew Carnegie

Read More »
Life by Numbers

Does a five-star rating say it all? Rita Samiolo ranks the ranks that pervade modern living Almost every aspect of our existence, from the mundane details of our shopping to

Read More »