Things have changed, indeed. Trade agreements are no more just about trade: they have become a tool for rearranging the world of politics. Protesting against that phenomenon is one option, of course. Yet, this is a book, and this is supposed to give smart insights into things of life. One smart insight that one can have about any phenomenon in the universe consists in asking ‘why now?’. Why wasn’t that TPP agreement signed ten years ago, or why not to push it off until in ten years from now? What is so special about the period we are living now? The simplest answer is ‘because there is a lot of movement in an increasingly crowded space’. Table 1 below presents compound annual growth rates (CAGR) in two demographic aggregates, as available in the databases of the World Bank: global population, and the global migrant stock. The World Bank’s definition of migrants cover all the people who have been born in a country different from the one they are being reported in the national census. As national censuses seldom cover all the immigrants present in a country, that account of migrant stock tends to show the long-run sedimentation of migration processes, rather than people really on the move at the moment. Until 1975, the rate of growth in the migrant stock was lower than the rate of growth in population. If the number of people moving grows slower than the number of people present in a space, it means that the velocity of movement decreases. After 1975, a new tendency emerges with a culminating point in 1990: the number of migrants grows faster than overall population. People are moving faster across the globe, and it does not refer to travelling: it refers to full relocation. In 1990, the surplus of growth in migration over the overall demographic growth reaches a record high of 7,9 percentage points. In was around 1990 that the Soviet Union, and the soviet bloc in general, split into parts. It was the time when the war in Yugoslavia started. It was the time of a short but violent explosion in the financial markets, followed by a financial depression. The first half of the 1990s brought some kind of slowdown to the global movement of population, but after 1995 the process restarted. By 2010, the migrant stock was growing much faster than population: humanity keeps moving over the planet at an increased speed. 

 After 2010, negotiations in the matter of two huge trade agreements – TTIP and TTP – started. Both are openly commented as an American step towards stronger international presence. It is hard to trace back the exact starting date, but somewhere between 2010 and 2013 seems a plausible assumption. In 2014, Russia invades Ukraine and takes over Crimea. In 2015, a massive wave of migrants flows into European Union, whilst Russia deploys its forces in the Middle East. In 2016, China deploys its navy in the Philippines, Turkey sends its troops into Syria, and the citizens of Great Britain vote for leaving the European Union. Slightly before the so-called ‘Brexit’ poll, the President of the United States of America publicly announces that it is out of the question for his administration to sign the TTIP just with Britain, with the exclusion of other European countries. This is a clear indication that someone made such a proposal. Big boys definitely start making long passes across the whole playground. All that happens as between 2000 and 2010, the speed of movement in the global population significantly increased.

 My question is on Barry R. Weingast and Gary W. Cox's project with the title Political-Economics of Development. By the present system, it is hard to distinguish an ordinary question and a question directed for the project leaders.

Dear Krzysztof Wasniewski, have you noticed this? Probably not. RG has to improve this point. Questions to projects should have visibly different appearance. 

Since the last two centuries, the difference in international development has been accelerating and there has been a great contradiction in that obesity (in every case) in places where there is a hunger problem in many countries

I believe the logics of economic development have not changed: it seems to me that there is a universalising - almost hegemonising - tendency to take economic development in terms of GDP-related measures, international trade, and and all the rationalist thinking and practice that go with these. The old logics of primitive accumulation of wealth - dispossession, competition, structural establishments, conflicts over excess value, etc - are replayed today except at faster and more astounding rates due to techno-scientific breakthroughs of the past one century. 

Dear Krzysztof, Haluk, and Sebastiano,

thank you for your intervention. As this question is addressed to the Weingast and Cox's project Political-Economics of Development below, please read their project and soem of their papers and give your comments or opinions on them.

https://www.researchgate.net/project/Political-Economics-of-Development?_esc=topicPostRelatedProject

You say

"anti-mainstream economic theories in developing countries are/were deeply influenced by Marxian economics and it had/has a strong tendency to emphasize an exploitation of developing countries by developed countries. A typical argument is the unequal exchange theory of A. Emmanuel and of the dependency theory.

How are you thinking about international aspects of economic development? - ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_are_you_thinking_about_international_aspects_of_economic_development [accessed Jan 11, 2017]. "

it is very important to respond to marxist view on economie, to change  biased view in developing countries but issue is very complicated when in actual theories persist marxists errors.

First error come from Adam Smith and David Ricardo definition of value. Henry Charles Carey (1793-1879), make an excellent critic of Ricardo pessimist view on labor reward. Carey expose  that Ricardo's statements represent an slavish system and not  a mercantile system. In a extensive and well documented assert, Carey conclude that real wages are growing thru time. Ricardo statements, Carey said,  have effect to down wages and in some form are connected to grim condition of working people in XIX century.

On other sense, there are a problem in international trade not yet noted that is different valuation of merchandise in two places. Merchandise valuation is dependent on reference system of each actor in change process. When same commodity is valued different for two actors appears a plusvalue that not depend of working time or skill but in purely reference system to valuate commodity.

This plusvalue is obtained for who made the trade and is a easy gain, proper for cartels, mafias or other depredator actions.

Developing countries are object of these trades and sell their products under this plusvalue-producing commerce. This can to respond to several questions on international trade.

My thinking about "the international aspects of economic development" can best be described as "ironic!"  Foreign investment seems to be driven by two objectives:  Either (1) developmental assistance, or (2) comparative advantage.  In the case of developmental assistance, the recipient nations often eventually become economic competitors to the donating nations.  In the case of comparative advantage, the "outsourcing" of resource supplies or production facilities also transfers economic activity abroad, where it eventually results in economic competition for the investing nations.  Ever since the beginning of modern colonialism, the operation of the global market has been shown to NOT provide win-win outcomes.  Either the developers, or those being developed, win at the expense of the other party.  Sometimes it begins with one set of winners, and eventually reverses, turning the losers into winners.  The global market is a "technique" of production and distribution; and like every other technique, it ALWAYS confers both benefits and detriments.  Ironically enough however, humanity hasn't (as yet) implemented a better arrangement.

Dear Francisco,

I did not know the name Henry Charles Carey. All I know now is based on information given in the article of Wikipedia on him. It is interesting to find an American protectionist alongside Hamilton. Nowadays we find very few protectionist economists in the US.

As for the Carey’s criticism against Ricardo, I believe it is necessary to distinguish theory and the opinion of the theory proponent. Up until Ricardo’s time, the real wage of workers in England remained almost constant for long years. Robert Allen points out that the real wage in London carpenters remained practically the same since 1300 AD. Ricardo, without having a good theory of wage, adopted the constancy of real wage as a part of his theory. But, this is not, I believe, an essential part of his theory of value, or more precisely cost of production theory of value. As I have showed in my paper: The Revival of Classical Theory of Values, it is more plausible that the markup rates remain bounded. If they remain bounded and production techniques improve, we can prove based on Ricardo's theory that the real rate rises. This is what happened in England after 1860.

Commodities have different prices at different places. However, this is not a serious problem. If we take into account the transportation costs and transaction costs (and tariffs and duties), we can practically assumes that the same commodity of the same quality have almost the same price.

What is important is why different countries have such a big different wages (evaluated by a single currency, say for example by U.S. dollars) as we observe now. Traditional theory of trade such as Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson or Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek theory has no power to approach this question. One of its typical theorems (factor price equalization theorem) tells that the factor prices of all trading nations become equal (provided that factor proportions stay in a certain range). In the neoclassical theory, labor is one of production factors and the wage rate is the price of labor as production factor. This means that all nations have the same wage rate. This is extremely absurd. In 2000, the per capita GDP of Siera Leone was 2% of that of the USA. How can HO theory explain this big discrepancy? We need totally different theory of trade and international values. Fortunately the new theory exists already. Please read my working paper cited in my question: The New Theory of International Values: An Overview.

Without having a good economic theory, you cannot arrive to understand the real reason of the underdevelopment and have a good policy to change the situation.

Yoshinori 

Dear colleagues and friends,

Have you read the paper quoted below?

John Komlos (2016) Another Road to Serfdom, Challenge, 59:6, 491-518,

DOI: 10.1080/05775132.2016.1244459.

The authors' opinions are intensely discussed and debated at present.

John Komlos points to actual roads to serfdom, such as concentration of power, dangerous imbalances, hollowing out of the middle class, large scale manipulation, the prevailing feeling of powerlessness which leads to apathy and so on.

In my opinion, it is more relavant to analyze the international aspects of economic development by taking into account the dimensions of social economics, i.e. the social aspects of economic development/growth.

What do you think about it?

Dear Iulia,

I started reading Komlos's paper. I found his working paper in the SSRN. Is he the same person who are member of RG?  

In my opinion, this is an interesting project combining important issues in the field of economics, politics, law and history. I, too, believe that international relations in the field of the economy also have a major impact on the dominant concepts of internal policy and economic performance. In my opinion, since the 1970s, in connection with the progressing deregulation of financial markets, the liberalization of international capital flows, the development of international corporations, information and economic globalization, the development of market currency systems, the growing importance of central banking, the development of ICT and electronic banking, the increase of the marketization of socialist systems economic, etc. in economics, neoclassical trends dominated. On the one hand, neoclassical trends in the history of economic thought refer to the classical economy of the dominance of free market economic structures operating on a national and international scale. On the other hand, neoclassical trends developing in the second half of the 20th century are enriched by the issues of the third and fourth technological revolution, the growing importance of the financial system and international capital flows. In addition, in recent economies, social and host policies have been built in recent years based on selected elements of Keynsism. The growing importance of Keynsism usually occurs in situations of financial and economic crises, during which anti-crisis, interventionist, Keynsian socio-economic policies are applied. I described these issues in my publications available on Research Gate.

Best wishes

Dariusz Prokopowicz