Press Room
Research
Colonial Institutions, Geography, or Post-Colonial Policy? Evidence on Long-Term Comparative Development from a Natural Experiment in South Asia
Working Paper, April 2018 | Shahram Azhar
Research
Reproductive Work and Female Labor Force Participation in Rural India
Working Paper, April 2018 | Sirisha C. Naidu, Smriti Rao
Research
Giovanni Arrighi in Beijing: Rethinking the Transformation of the Labor Supply in Rural China During the Reform Era
Working Paper, February 2018 | Hao Qi, Zhongjin Li
In “Giovanni Arrighi in Beijing: Rethinking the Transformation of the Labor Supply in Rural China During the Reform Era,” Hao Qu and Zhongjin Li use a Marxian political economy perspective to analyze the formation of the reserve army of labor in China during the reform era, which began in 1978. Building from the work of Arrighi, and critiquing the highly influential Lewis model, Qu and Li show how the formation of an industrial reserve army in China has been an historical process in which the state has played an active role.
Research
Migration, Crises, and Social Transformation in India Since the 1990s
Working Paper, January 2018 | Smriti Rao, Vamsi Vakulabharanam
Since liberalization, urban migration in India has increased in quantity, but also changed in quality, with permanent marriage migration and temporary, circular employment migration rising, even as permanent economic migration remains stagnant. In this new paper, Smriti Rao and Vamsi Vakulabharanam understand internal migration in India to be a re-ordering of productive and reproductive labor that signifies a deep transformation of society. This transformation is a response to the combination of agrarian, employment, and social reproduction crises. The migration patterns support capital accumulation, but create major burdens for a majority of Indians, who are seeking stable, rooted livelihoods.
Research
Re-Conceptualizing Processes of Post-Colonial Development in Pakistan: The Interplay of Institutions and Class
Working Paper, December 2017 | Danish Khan
Research
Revisiting the Gender Wage Gap in Korea: Focusing on Working Hours by Occupation
Working Paper, December 2017 | Nayeon Lim, Minsik Choi
This paper by Nayeon Lim and Minsik Choi explores the relationship between working hours and the gender wage gap in Korea. Because the labor practice of working long hours in South Korea favors men, who tend to spend little time on domestic labor, long working hours can influence the gender wage gap by discriminating against women. Among other factors, working hours have a positive effect on the gender wage gap in male-dominated occupations, but not in female-dominated ones. Thus, working long hours could be a primary factor explaining the large gender wage gap in Korea, where most occupations are male-dominated.
Research
Competing Economic Paradigms in China: The Co-Evolution of Economic Events, Economic Theory and Economics Education 1976-2016
Routledge Press
Book, October 2017 | Steve Cohn
In this book, Stephen Cohn of Knox College analyzes how and why neoclassical and new institutionalist economics replaced Marxist economics as the dominant political-economic paradigms inside China. The book examines the different ways that Marxist and neoclassical economists thought about rural restructuring, the reorganization of the international sector, and the performance of state owned enterprises. It finds the reconstruction of the Chinese economics profession in the image of the American profession reflected the impact of classical liberalism, the daily language of market-speak, and abandonment of questions about the construction of socialism.
Research
Dynamics of the Rate of Surplus Value and the "New Normal" of the Chinese Economy
Working Paper, June 2017 | Hao Qi
This paper by Hao Qi creates a time series of the rate of surplus value for the Chinese economy over the extended period 1956-2014, using a Marxian approach. It finds that the high profitability that stimulated capital accumulation in the decade before the 2008 crisis had relied on the continuous growth in the rate of surplus value. But after the crisis, the conditions supporting a high rate of surplus value—an expanding external market, a relatively large reserve army of labor, and a low debt-income ratio—have weakened. This has led to a "new normal" pattern of declining profitability in China.
Research
Growth and Distribution Regimes in India since Independence
The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs
Journal Article, November 2016 | Vamsi Vakulabharanam, Rahul De
Research
China, India and Southeast Asia: Paths to Development and State-Society Relations: Introduction
The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs
Journal Article, November 2016 | Vamsi Vakulabharanam, Edmund Terence Gomez, Cheong Kee Cheok
PERI’s Vamsi Vakulabharanam co-authors two new articles in a Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs’ special edition on China, India and Southeast Asia. In the Introduction to the special edition, Vakulabharanam and co-authors present an overview of the complexities of state-society relations and address the effects of India and China’s new political economies on Southeast Asia and the global economy. In a second piece, “Growth and Distribution Regimes in India,” the authors discuss the four different regimes of capitalist growth and distribution since India’s Independence. They show that as economic growth in India accelerated, private capitalists and professional classes became increasingly able to utilize the state to further their own interests.
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