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Development

Oil revenues for public investment in Africa: Targeting urban or rural areas?

Source: JournalistsResource.org
 

In the study of economic development, there is a general consensus that public infrastructure investments supporting private sector-led economic activities are essential for growth. However, questions remain about how countries with newly found natural resources such as oil might best spend revenues on infrastructure and avoid the “resource curse” — the tendency of economies focused on such resources to see slower, and narrower, growth.

The promise and perils of private voluntary regulation: Labor standards and work organization in two Mexican garment factories

Source: JournalistsResource.org
 

As supply chains stretch around the globe, scrutiny of working conditions in distant factories has increased. But international labor standards often depend on corporations engaging in “private voluntary regulation,” and even when such standards are adhered to, factory floor dynamics may determine their actual effectiveness.

New Left policies and Latin America: Research review and reading list

Source: JournalistsResource.org
 

Beginning in 1998, Latin America began taking a sharp turn to the political left with the election of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Argentina’s Néstor Carlos Kirchner, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Chile’s Ricardo Lagos, among others. Following Chavez’s death, a reassessment of the region’s recent social and economic past — and future prospects — has commenced among scholars and media members.

Conflict minerals and firms' ignorance over their supply chains

Source: JournalistsResource.org
 

The issue: Your smartphone or desktop computer is not built from scratch by Apple or Dell. It includes parts made by subcontractors. But one sole subcontractor does not make every chip inside; that task is handled by yet another subcontractor, who may buy the needed tantalum from still another supplier who may have purchased the tantalum ore from a militia leader who forces children to work in dangerous mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).