Showing papers on "Global public good published in 2015"

Knowledge as Global Public Good

Abstract: This chapter applies the framework of public goods to knowledge. It shows that knowledge has some characteristics of public good, such as being non‐rival in consumption and in the long run non‐excludable. But it also argues that knowledge cannot be transferred from producers to users at low or negligible costs: to effectively use knowledge, prospective users should devote time and energy to its assimilation. Consequently, free‐riding in knowledge is less likely to be successful than with other public goods. This has also important implications for national and global policies. Catching up countries need to implement policies of active learning if they really wish to get the benefit of knowledge. Intellectual property rights have the purpose of making knowledge institutionally excludable, and this contradicts the objective pursued by governments and international organizations to disseminate science and technology. It is finally argued that the normative implication of the global public goods analysis in the case of knowledge requires greater public investment and international cooperation.

Overcoming the Copenhagen Failure with Flexible Commitments

Abstract: The fundamental issues presented by climate change are first, that the global environment is a global public good and second, the question of how to share the burden of providing a better climate. Everyone would like to "free ride" on the efforts of others, but there is disagreement over who is free riding. The Kyoto approach, based on dividing up emission rights, has an inherent problem in that such rights could easily reach a monetary value of over a trillion dollars a year. The approach suggested here avoids any attempt at a grand solution to the fair allocation of these rights. A low-carbon economy could be achieved through the imposition of a moderate carbon price, which would raise substantial revenue and allow a reduction in other taxes, thereby keeping the deadweight loss small. Countries should be given flexibility in how they meet their obligations - whether through a carbon tax, a system of cap and trade, or even possibly certain regulatory mechanisms. But a fully voluntary agreement likely cannot include countries that export a significant amount of fossil fuel. A green fund financed by allocating say 20% of carbon revenues collected in developed countries could be used to implement "differentiated responsibilities."

Never Again: Building resilient health systems and learning from the Ebola crisis

Abstract: It took the threat of a global health crisis to illustrate the failings of Africa’s health systems. Resilient health systems, free at the point of use, are evidently a global public good. They are essential for the provision of universal health coverage and for a prompt response to outbreaks of disease. Resilient health systems require long-term investment in the six key elements that are required for a resilient system: an adequate number of trained health workers; available medicines; robust health information systems, including surveillance; appropriate infrastructure; sufficient public financing and a strong public sector to deliver equitable, quality services. Global investment in research and development for medical products is also critical. This briefing paper identifies lessons from the current Ebola crisis, as well as previous outbreaks, to review what is required to build resilient health systems in West Africa and beyond. The paper presents recommendations for affected countries, governments, donors and international organizations.

Investment and Adaptation as Commitment Devices in Climate Politics

Abstract: It is well established that adaptation and technological investment in each case may serve as a commitment device in international climate politics. This paper for the first time analyzes the combined impact of these two strategic variables on global mitigation within a non-cooperative framework where countries either decide on mitigation before or after adaptation. By investment, which is assumed to be made in the first place due to its considerable lead time, countries commit to lower national contributions to the global public good of mitigation. We find that the sequencing of adaptation before mitigation reinforces this strategic effect of technological investments at least for sufficiently similar countries. As a consequence, the subgame-perfect equilibrium yields a globally lower level of mitigation, and higher global costs of climate change when adaptation is decided before mitigation. Besides this theoretical contribution, the paper proposes some strategies to combat the unfortunate rush to adaptation which can be currently observed in climate politics.

Identities and Heritage: Contemporary Challenges in a Globalized World

Abstract: The great acceleration of globalizing forces presents those in the heritage field with a series of urgent challenges. Chief among them is the weakness of contemporary mechanisms for addressing collective global issues. With the appearance of a distinctive form of “global politics” marked by intense interconnectivity within transnational frameworks, global problems cannot be resolved by any one nation-state or people. Collective and collaborative action is required, yet problem-solving capacities at the local, regional, and global levels are partial and incomplete.

Opportunities for and Alternatives to Global Climate Regimes Post-Kyoto

Abstract: International policies for mitigation of climate change provide a global public good and thus suffer from “free riding,” i.e., inaction of governments. In 25 years of negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the regime has changed its character from a top-down approach based on mandatory emissions commitments to a bottom-up system of voluntary government pledges. At the same time, various initiatives by governments at all levels and private companies have been established, but most are limited to emissions reporting and exchange of knowledge on mitigation technologies. None of the alternatives has shown a higher mitigation effectiveness than the Kyoto Protocol. Generally, the transition toward a bottom-up regime risks a reduction of transparency and increases in the transaction costs of mitigation. Although it could give rise to a club of countries engaging in strong mitigation that could expand over time, it is unlikely to be ambitious enough to achieve the target of lim...

Tipping versus Cooperating to Supply a Public Good

Abstract: In some important multi-player situations, such as efforts to supply a global public good, players can choose the game they want to play. In this paper we conduct an experimental test of the decision to choose between a “tipping” game, in which every player wants to contribute to the public good provided enough other players contribute, and a prisoners’ dilemma, the classic cooperation game. In the prisoners’ dilemma, the first best outcome is attainable, but cannot be sustained as a Nash equilibrium. In the tipping game, only a second best outcome may be attainable, but there exists a Nash equilibrium that is strictly preferred to the one in the prisoners’ dilemma. We show that groups do significantly better when they choose the tipping game, and yet many groups repeatedly choose the prisoners’ dilemma, indicating a mistaken and persistent tendency to prefer a game with potentially higher payoffs to one having a strategic advantage.

Fragmented Energy Governance and the Provision of Global Public Goods

Abstract: This article analyses global energy governance from an international political economy and global public goods (GPG) perspective. It first describes the fragmentation that characterises energy governance and its current trend towards an increasingly inter-polar and polycentric pattern. Then, it shows how the myriad of dedicated international energy regimes conform to an energy regime complex that provides a diverse set of GPG rather than a single international energy regime. Then, global energy governance is analysed from a global public good angle, (1) categorizing the different institutional energy-related arrangements according to the public good they intend to provide; and (2) highlighting that the supply of such institutional arrangements is greatly influenced by the different provision technologies that are applied to the different energy-related global public goods.

Remarks as prepared for delivery : World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim at the annual meeting plenary session

Abstract: The World Bank Group has long-standing experience in designing more effective social protection programs, improving investment climates, and identifying pro-growth public investments. As a global Bank, we stand ready to offer our knowledge and technical assistance wherever we are asked to do so, including in high income countries that are undergoing economic reforms. Middle income countries are searching for new solutions to a different set of challenges. Many of these economies have grown rapidly in recent years. And yet, as we all recognize, the strategies they used to thrive in the past may not be appropriate for the challenges ahead. These include ensuring the participation of poor people in the growth process; closing infrastructure and energy deficits; enacting second-generation policy reforms; and embracing their roles as responsible and generous stakeholders in the global system. In the 68 years since its founding, the World Bank Group has continuously evolved with a changing world. It was originally a 'reconstruction bank,’ focused on rebuilding Europe after World War II. Under Robert McNamara it became a 'lending bank', extending funding for poverty reduction in developing countries. Under Jim Wolfensohn, the Bank transformed again into a ‘knowledge bank’, expanding the institution’s own understanding of the development process and its role in promoting inclusive development.

Green Consumers and Climate Policy: Reconciling Ostrom and Nyborg, Howarth and Brekke

Abstract: Given the global public good properties of climate change mitigation, mitigation efforts have to rely on the willingness of individuals to voluntarily contribute to this public good, either under the form of “green” consumer behavior or through the acceptance of costly climate policy. This paper discusses and reconciles two seminal contributions identifying the rationales for voluntary efforts toward climate change mitigation. Based on the existing literature, it confirms that conditional cooperation may respond to perceived effectiveness and social norms, as suggested by the theory. When the social norm is not visible, conditional cooperation may rely on general beliefs of trustworthiness, i.e. trust. As a result, the conceptual framework of this paper supports the idea of reciprocal countries, thus contributing to endogenize the participation of countries to emissions abatement efforts and to international climate agreements.

Archaeology as Global Public Good and Local Identity Good

Abstract: For more than a half century, anthropologists have looked askance, and many have rejected outright, the economic models that are commonly presented in microeconomic textbooks. As an alternate to these formalist models, which are employed by economists themselves, a substantivist model was devised by a set of anthropologists. These became the basis for what has since been known as economic anthropology. Economics in the substantivist model is broadly focused on exchange, which in pre-capitalist societies typically did not involve currency, and the network of obligations reinforced or established by exchange. The globalized world of the twenty-first century, however, has enmeshed all societies in capitalism, and has rendered culture itself, in all of its forms, a commodity. Many forms of culture are endangered by unregulated trade in the marketplace, among them material culture, and, more specifically, archaeological materials. When commercial activities destroy or take from the context in which they were deposited archaeological materials, the scientific and historic knowledge that might have been gained from systematic, scientific analysis of those materials is lost forever. In this chapter, a formalist economic analysis is conducted in order to better identify threats to the archaeological record that arise in the global marketplace, and to argue for the use of archaeological materials to produce global public goods in ways that will stimulate the public support that is, ultimately, essential to the preservation of the archaeological record.

Beyond known worlds:climate change governance by arbitral tribunals?

Abstract: Can economic development and the fight against climate change be integrated successfully? What role, if any, does international investment law play in global climate governance? Can foreign direct investments (FDI) be tools in the struggle against climate change? What types of claims have foreign investors brought with regard to climate change-related regulatory measures before investment treaty arbitral tribunals? This Article examines the specific question as to whether foreign direct investments can mitigate and/or aggravate climate change The interplay between climate change and foreign direct investments is largely underexplored and in need of systematization To map this nexus, this Article proceeds as follows First, it examines the conceptualization of climate as a global public good Second, it considers it as an environmental issue Third, it scrutinizes its conceptualization as a human rights issue Fourth, it explores critical legal issues raised by the complex interplay between climate change and foreign direct investments Fifth, it critically assesses several current case studies Sixth, the Article will present some legal tools to achieve a balance between the different interests at stake The conclusion will then sum up the key findings of the study

Brazil on the Global Stage: Origins and Consequences of Brazil’s Challenge to the Global Liberal Order

Abstract: The global liberal order emerged triumphant from the Cold War, consolidated under the aegis of US power. But international institutions are increasingly under review, with a variety of nations challenging the implicit hierarchy of the global order, the dominant role of the United States within that order, and the essential foundations of global liberalism. Some challenges were widely anticipated: governments in China and Russia, for example, do not share the basic political tenets of the global liberal order, and China’s rise poses the most obvious long-term challenge to today’s US-led order.

Information as a Global Public Good and the Role of Modern Educational Technologies in the Creation of the Information Society

Abstract: Becoming the “basic production and power factor” in the 21st century, information confronts us in a very important form as a Global Public Good (GPG). It is the basis of the “information society” that is regarded as the advanced social form of the present time. Important roles fall to education in the production, access, and use of the information that transforms societies into an economic and social development stage. Education needs to reconstruct itself in accordance with the conditions of the information society through adapting itself to technological and scientific changes in order to fulfill the functions it undertakes. Addressing the topic from a theoretical perspective, this chapter aims at determining the place and importance of education for the creation of information as a global public good and the information society on the basis of the educational paradigm of the information society, and educational technologies to make it possible.

From domestic to global? Recent trends in environmental liability from a multilevel and comparative law perspective

Abstract: The law of environmental liability has already been the object of several comparative endeavours. This article seeks to bring a different perspective to the debate, by examining selected developments in the field through the lens of the emerging global environmental law scholarship. It brings the comparative method of analysis into a multi-level context with a view to identifying the emergence of common legal responses to the problem of liability and reparation for environmental harm across different jurisdictions and regulatory levels. The analysis will focus on a ‘novel’ set of environmental liability regimes, which specifically address damage to the environment and to natural resources, as distinct from more traditional categories of damage to property and other individual rights arising as a consequence of environmental pollution. These include: the United States Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, and the Oil Pollution Act, which constitute a pioneering attempt to envisage a public law-oriented system of liability and restoration for damage to natural resources; the European Union Environmental Liability Directive; and selected, recent international treaty developments. The article argues that, while adopted within different legal orders and regulatory contexts, these environmental liability regimes share common features, which correspond to the ontological aspects of environmental damage and ultimately reflect a common understanding of the environment as a global public good.

Is International Law Conducive to Prevent Looming Disasters

Abstract: Looming disasters mostly require collective action but international law is traditionally consent based For a state to be bound by international law, it needs to have ratified a treaty (eg concerning climate change) or must be bound by customary international law This horizontal form of cooperation makes the system sensitive to collective action problems (like free-riding on global public good, overuse of commons, begging-thy-neighbor etc) I explore the question of whether other forms of cooperation, eg cooperation through soft law or international organizations mitigate the problem and under what circumstances this might be so Furthermore, international law design might need to take into account internal processes within states (breaking up the black-box) as well as behavioral economic insights The paper will suggest some mechanisms to help prevent states overcoming the cooperation problem with regard to looming disasters and highlight their limits as well It submits that international lawyers need to look at all behavioral mechanisms of international law in order to understand how it can be designed and used to prevent looming disasters

Future of the Multilateral Trading System: Why the WTO Remains Indispensable?

Abstract: From 1947 the Multilateral Trading System (MTS), based on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), was the engine for stability, unprecedented economic growth, welfare and prosperity in the post-war global order. These objectives were sustained with the coming into force of the World Trade Organization (WTO), in 1995, as the successor to the GATT. The WTO inherited the GATT acquis, the “credits” from the remarkable accomplishments of the GATT, but also its challenges and, in a radically altered global environment, defined by the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, significant shifts in the relative balance of power and the emergence of multi-polarity. In its Twentieth Anniversary, the WTO has registered strong gains. Its regular work is functioning at high levels of technical and operational efficiency in the administration of its Agreement. Its Dispute Settlement function is highly regarded in public international law. Historically, the Organization is expanding its membership, through multilateral accession negotiations in regular work, that is integrating diverse economies, previously outside the system, into the rules-based MTS, based on a balance of rights and obligations and on the foundation of the core values of the market economy, the rule of law and good governance. In its Twentieth Anniversary, the role of the WTO is indispensable and its functions are non-substitutable. It continues to uniquely deliver the global public good of non-discriminatory trade rules. However, the WTO has been unable to conclude the Doha Round of Negotiations launched in 2001. This failure is seen as hobbling its systemic legislative function and framing the wider negative perceptions of the Organization. It is confronted by this failure, and other inherited and recent challenges that are weighing it down. Several of these challenges have become more acute due to changes in the international trading environment and domestic political economies. Multilateral trade rules require system-wide regular updates to take account of these rapid transformations in the global and domestic environments to ensure that the organization is in lock step with commercial and public policy realities. Protectionism is more pernicious than ever, fuelled by the increased frequency of financial and economic crises. Public policy concerns have to be reconciled with trade liberalization. PTAs are proliferating, due in part to sluggish multilateral rule-making. Geopolitics is resurgent with risks for rule-making and growth. Although the role of the WTO remains indispensable, the original mandates of multilateral institutions do not establish them permanently. At particular generational turns, defined by crises and challenges, multilateral institutions must re-define (or reaffirm) and re-position themselves to ensure contemporaneity, retention of pole position in their area of competent jurisdiction and, effectiveness. Responding to these challenges requires the courage of strategic leadership with three critical components: deep knowledge of the past and its lessons; a prospectus for change; and, a capacity to effect such change.

Intellectual Property Law and the Protection of Traditional Knowledge: From Cultural Conservation to Knowledge Codification

Abstract: The legal protection of traditional knowledge (TK) – the know-how, skills and practices of indigenous and local communities – has recently become a focus of dialogue and scholarship at national and international stages. Intellectual property (IP) laws protect scientific and artistic creations. Patent laws in particular give exclusive rights over new (novel), inventive (non-obvious) and useful knowledge. Consequently, new ‘modern knowledge’ is protected through legal intervention that provides limited artificial monopolies while TK is considered to be ‘old knowledge’ that fails to meet the requirements of patent laws such as novelty and non-obviousness. TK was considered to be in the public domain free for anyone to use. However, there is a growing body of scholarship which argues that innovation and knowledge production does take place within traditional settings and that legal protection is required to conserve this valuable body of knowledge. While such arguments have mainly used approaches based on distributive justice and equity, this paper takes an economic analysis of law approach to propose a new justification for the protection of TK. In the year 2000 the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) established the Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC) in response to calls from member countries for the creation of an international forum for deliberation on the topics. After more than a decade of negotiations, delegates in the IGC have managed to produce a draft instrument on the protection of TK. However, many aspects of the instrument remain controversial and have given rise to a divide between developed and developing countries. The meaning of protection, scope of rights and remedies are among the controversial provisions of the draft instrument. The protection of TK has also been discussed under the framework of the Convention on Biodiversity and the United Nations Declaration on the Right of Indigenous People, among others. This paper proposes an ‘incentive to codify’ justification distinguished from the currently dominant ‘incentive to conserve’ justification for the protection of TK. It posits that the incentive required in the case of TK is not for conservation of lifestyle as is claimed currently but for codification of the knowledge. Taking traditional medicinal knowledge as a case study, it argues that a carefully crafted legal protection for codified TK will encourage its systemic documentation and save this highly valuable body of knowledge from the alarming rate of loss it is face with. In addition to its inherent value, traditional medicinal knowledge has proved to be a valuable predictive tool in bioprospecting projects - the R&D efforts conducted on biological resources to discover new drugs. However, because of negative past experiences governments of countries in which indigenous and local communities reside have increasingly become restrictive with regard to access to TK. Thus, the codification and disclosure of such knowledge is of urgent importance. In order to support the claim for the ‘incentive to codify’ justification, TK is analyzed as a global public good with non-rivalrous and non-excludable features and subject to market failure. Analogy is also made to patent laws and the implication of such legal intervention on the codification of modern knowledge.

The Future Challenges of Heritage and Identity in a Globalized World

Abstract: Heritage and identity studies provide a voice for archaeology and anthropology in ongoing conversations among academic disciplines that have, in recent decades, significantly influenced policy and decision making at national and global levels. Contributors to this book have written about how the past is introduced into the present. Implicit in each chapter is the position that the past is indeed prologue if it is not cast as unrelated events, and that heritage knits together past events in a pattern that is inevitably used to imagine and therefore set a course for the future. Heritage can do this for individual communities that are united by local concerns in ways designed to privilege those communities, but it can also be informed by archaeology and anthropology, becoming a means by which to generate the global public good of knowledge. Many realms of scholarship concerned with the ways that humans are organized into societies, including economics, political science, and legal studies, have borrowed heavily from anthropology in developing arguments and positions that are now elemental in public discourse. A review of how this was done suggests the challenges that must be met in order to reinvigorate the use of archaeological materials in an anthropological approach to heritage and identity for the intellectual and practical benefit of academe and the public at large.

Promoting Global Health: The World Association of Medical Editors' position on editors' responsibility.

Abstract: We live in a world community. Our countries are interconnected in ways unanticipated by previous generations. This new reality means that global health can only be achieved through collaboration, cooperation, and sharing of resources across boundaries. Global health has been defined in several ways and we draw attention to one of these: “Global health is an area for study, research, and practice that places a priority on improving health and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide. Global health emphasizes transnational health issues, determinants, and solutions; involves many disciplines within and beyond the health sciences and promotes interdisciplinary collaboration; and is a synthesis of population-based prevention with individual-level clinical care.”(1) Published medical research is a global public good. For their part as members of a world community, editors of medical journals have a social responsibility to publish quality research on global health. Some important peer-reviewed journals are devoted exclusively to global health, but editors of general medical and health specialty journals also have a social responsibility to publish quality research on global health. Editors, editorial boards, and publishers must realize the importance of identifying, measuring and understanding global health concerns, including their burden, determinants, patterns, and impact, as well as solutions and successes to improve health and create necessary change. The importance of these concepts should be reflected in their pages. Research and commentary must address not only the clinical presentation and epidemiological features of health and disease across the globe but also the social and political realities that jeopardize the advancement of health and well-being of people and countries, including political unrest, compromised health and public health systems, and social, economic, cultural and environmental factors. The World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), a voluntary global organization of medical journal editors, is uniquely positioned to define the critical role that editors have to play in promoting global health. In its 20 years of existence, WAME has sought to facilitate worldwide cooperation and communication among editors of peer-reviewed medical journals, improve editorial standards, and promote professionalism in medical journal editing. Its membership comprises 1915 members representing more than 1000 journals from 92 countries (2) and represents a greater breadth of medical editors than any other professional organization. Therefore, in May 2015, WAME issued its statement on promoting global health (Appendix A). How should an editor meet this social responsibility? He or she must, whenever possible, publish research that furthers health worldwide [especially addressing the greatest global health concerns (3)] that meets the journal’s standards for research quality, regardless of where the research was conducted and irrespective of the gender, race and ethnicity of the authors. Papers that describe and analyze the global health concerns in terms of disease burden, determinants, patterns, impacts and the like are important, but editors need to also encourage publications that are innovative and solution-focused, including research with negative results. Editors need to be mindful that lowand middle-income countries (LMIC) often have the greatest health burdens, and therefore encourage research from authors in those geographic areas. Editors should not change their quality criteria, but they should recognize that some authors for whom English is not the primary language may need assistance in polishing manuscripts for publication and provide constructive feedback and assistance if possible. Editors need to invite researchers in LMIC to be peer reviewers so that the relevant global health context is consid-

Going Global: The G8’s Adaptation to Rising Powers

Abstract: In its 40 years of existence, the Group of Eight (G8) major market democracies has gradually expanded its membership and participation, embraced virtually all major global issues and taken ambitious actions to fulfill its distinctive mission of globally promoting open democracy, individual liberty and social advance. In doing so it has regularly faced the challenge of adapting to rising powers, especially after the arrival of the post-Cold War, globalizing, twenty-first century world.

Trade-related International Food Security and the Developing World

Abstract: Taking a historical narrative as a departure point, this article begins by telling the story of how food security has traditionally been understood in the international community and has become intertwined with the rise and fall of agricultural trade under GATT/WTO rules. The different approaches towards food security over the past six decades have ranged from the supply-side to the entitlements-based approach, through the human security and rights-based approaches. It is further argued in this article that trade-related food security operates on two distinct and sometimes unrelated levels. Externally, despite a prevailing view among some Member governments that food security is outside the scope of the WTO and should be kept that way, the Secretariat has pursued food security-related trade links on behalf of the WTO in various international fora. Increasingly, food security is conceived of by the broader international community as a global public good, which calls for a more comprehensive, multi-stakeholder approach towards its regulation and governance, which is a view that is not unanimously held in the WTO. Internally, the WTO legal and policy framework for trade-related food security remains fragmented, inchoate and subject to regulatory capture by Member governments. The current state of trade-related international food security in the multilateral trading system is explored through the incomplete agricultural reform programme, the resort by some key WTO developing and transitional economy Members to public stockholding for food security purposes and domestic food aid, and the disjuncture between some Members’ policy on domestic support measures/export restrictions and their participation in global agricultural trade.

Unilateral Liberalization within the GATT/WTO System

Abstract: Will the liberal international trading system be extended by building it into a global public good through the ceding of authority over trade control instruments to a supra-national authority? Or will we see a bottom-up process, propelled by the work of millions of entrepreneurs who partner up across borders, their efforts facilitated by cooperation through organizations such as the WTO? I argue that the latter interpretation is more descriptive of the extensive liberalization by developing countries in recent decades. The future international trading system will not be one of supra-national sovereignty, but one in which no national government imposes more than minimal restrictions on the freedom of its citizens to engage in economic transactions with citizens of other countries. (The world economy will not be made in the image of the European Union.) In support, I draw on recent research on liberalization in Latin America.

Governing the Global Economy with the One-Size-Fits-All Model: From Ideology to Reality

Abstract: Over the past few decades, globalization has provided many countries with opportunities, but it also comes with the challenge of international market failure. This paper has two objectives. First, we aim to provide a chronological account that traces global policy roots of market fundamentalism and collective action; and articulates the evolving role and power structures of international players in claiming, for the common interest, to provide global public good of financial stability. This approach succinctly demonstrates the varying ideological underpinnings in the continued pursuit of international standards to manage negative externalities of globalization. Second, by constructing three composite indexes of macroeconomic and financial factors for eleven countries, we assess the effectiveness of collective action in tackling market failures during the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the global credit crisis of 2007. Overall, we find a substantial gap between public policy subscription and actual needs of those crisis hit economies.

How to safeguard world heritage sites? A theoretical model of “cultural responsibility”

Abstract: We outline a model in which preservation of UNESCO heritage sites is analyzed as a classical global public good problem where the decentralized Nash equilibrium yields suboptimal contribution vis-a-vis the Social Planner equilibrium. The absence of a Global Social Planner and the need of coordination across different countries for the implementation of the second solution make the Social Planner equilibrium hardly attainable. The same problem arises when trying to enforce symmetric or asymmetric tax deductions in different countries. We analyze the contribution that cultural corporate responsibility can give to the solution of the problem discussing its limits and potential vis-a-vis the other two alternatives.

The German Question and the European Question. Monetary Union and European Democracy after the Greek crisis

Abstract: The dramatic clash between creditor and debtor countries in the EU shows that radical reforms are required. In this paper we argue that the EMU is a political project: it is a European public good, which must be provided by a legitimate democratic government. Yet during the crisis, Germany played the role of leading country, and the old dilemma between a German Europe and a European Germany cropped up again. Here we examine two interjurisdictional spillovers caused by asymmetries among the governance and size of the economies in the euro area: the bank-sovereign nexus and the internal deflation trap. In order to avoid social and economic disequilibria, we propose a European economic model for the euro area based on a long-term balance of payment equilibrium, as an alternative to the German export-led economy model. Current account surpluses and deficits are neither a virtue nor a sin. The euro area should be endowed with a federal budget, enabling the European Commission to employ European savings to spur growth, employment and public and private investments. The new European model must be coherent and compatible with the needs of the other states of the world; the stability of the international economy is also a global public good. Indeed we can look at the European model to draw some principles for reforming the old international economic order set up at Bretton Woods, but now in crisis due to global imbalances and international monetary and financial instability.