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A Capitalist’s Apology: Free Markets, Freedom, and Development — published on the World Poverty & Human Rights Online website as part of my WPHR class this Spring.
The published HTML version can be found on the site and a PDF version is also available for those interested.
The topic and abstract for my IPE term paper that I had originally planned turned out to be a little too broad in its scope. As a result, my final paper had a much tighter focus.
Fluctuation & Flexibility: A Case Study of Exchange Rate Regimes from the 1997-1998 East Asian Crisis
The choice between fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes has long-lasting impacts on a nation’s economic security, and consequently, its political outlook. However, such a freedom of choice is almost always limited by the fiscal and monetary health of the nation. This paper evaluates the extent of such a freedom, and how choices in exchange rate regimes affect a country’s economic performance. Specifically, this paper uses the East Asian economic crisis as a case study to examine the effects of exchange rate policies.
The case study was performed on the basis of an exchange rate regime model by Patrick Osakwe, and was built using data before and after the Asian Crisis. The data and the results from the model were then utilized to review the original assumptions, and this laid the foundation for the conclusions drawn from the case study.
You can find my paper — Fluctuation & Flexibility: A Case Study of Exchange Rate Regimes from the 1997-1998 East Asian Crisis — and the referenced Patrick Osakwe’s paper on choice of exchange rate regimes in emerging markets.
Finally, a quick caveat that this was a class term paper that’s effectively going to be a working paper to extend and validate Osakwe’s model. So, please treat it as such.
I’d written a blog post on my other blog on Minnesota introducing the world’s first carbon tariff.
Since that is more of an IPE topic than anything else, a friend has suggested that I cross-post the same here — so here it is!
My International Political Economy Research Proposal topic for Professor Jeff Frieden’s class:
Should developing countries peg their currencies in recessionary conditions?
There are several supporting data points available, such as recessions in Asian “Tiger economies”, depressions in the Latin American countries, and the economic policies of BRIC economies under poor economic conditions.
This topic also provides sufficient breadth to address not merely the economic policies, but also the domestic and international policies of various nations under those conditions. Particular case studies would include countries with liberal economies, as well as protectionist regimes, and countries with diverse domestic socio-economic policies (e.g. nations with socialist, communist and Marxist policies). In addition, the paper would also look at the domestic and international political climate of the economies under consideration and the roles that they played in fostering economic policies under recessionary conditions.
Currency was chosen as a specific example for consideration because it provides a quantitative and empirical measure to compare successful policies against the rest.