Jomo Kwame Sundaram

• PhD
• Khazanah Research Institute

This article outlines various phases of the evolution of trade liberalization and globalization, and the changing division of labour in the world economy. It discusses how economic specialization and international trade have been shaped by power relations, corporate interests and national economic capacities. It explores the challenging implication...

The debt crises looming in developing countries are being exacerbated by changing debt composition. Declining net foreign exchange earnings have worsened their predicament. As concessional development finance declined, many governments turned to riskier forms of borrowing from international capital markets. Concerted interest rate hikes are suppose...

Against the backdrop of an inflationary surge due to war, sanctions and pandemic disruptions, the article argues against dogmatic responses to inflation. Using extant theoretical and empirical literature as well as time-series data, it examines the scope for ‘moderate inflation rates’, above what is currently targeted. Specifically, it seeks to asc...

Advocates made exaggerated claims that privatization would reduce governments’ fiscal problems while ensuring more efficient, productive and competitive economies by promoting private entrepreneurship, innovation and investments. Led by Margaret Thatcher and the Washington-based international financial institutions from the 1980s, privatization pro...

This article offers an alternative narrative on contemporary inflation and policy responses to it. It argues policy responses to inflation have been driven by unfounded beliefs underlying current inflation myths and phobia. These are rooted in neoliberal ideology and dogma, especially influential since the neo-classical counter-revolution against K...

Martin Khor’s 1983 book on Malaysian economic dependence provided the first comprehensive estimates of the ‘colonial surplus’ from British Malaya. Khor described how Great Britain secured this from the colonial Malayan economy and estimated various types of surplus extracted via different means. Unsurprisingly, super-profits for privileged foreign...

International climate finance is key to managing overall climate risk with many developing countries' climate plans and actions are conditional on getting the necessary financial support. Unsurprisingly, helping fund poorer countries to address climate change is one of the most contentious subjects in climate politics. This article examines the sta...

Jomo Kwame Sundaram es asesor principal del Instituto de Investigación Khazanah, miembro de la Academia de Ciencias de Malasia, profesor emérito de la Universidad de Malaya y miembro visitante de la Iniciativa para el Diálogo Político de la Universidad de Columbia. Fue fundador y presidente de International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs),...

This review draws pragmatic lessons for developing countries to address COVID-19-induced recessions and to sustain a developmental recovery. These recessions are unique, caused initially by supply disruptions, largely due to government-imposed ‘stay-in-shelter lockdowns’. These have interacted with falling incomes and demand, declining exports (and...

Reviewing selected policy responses in Asia and South America, this paper draws pragmatic lessons for developing countries to better address the COVID-19 pandemic. It argues that not acting quickly and adequately incurs much higher costs. So-called ‘best practices’, while useful, may be inappropriate, especially if not complemented by effective and...

Este artículo examina el panorama mundial en el contexto de la pandemia por Covid-19. Aborda ejemplos de distintas medidas que algunos países han tomado para frenar la pandemia y la crisis que la acompaña, y analiza sus resultados en cuanto a contagios y consecuencias económicas. Plantea que para tomar medidas contra la crisis se deben considerar l...

The widely held belief that China’s undervalued exchange rate has been crucial to its rapid industrialization and economic growth over the last four decades is critically qualified and nuanced. In any case, renminbi (RMB) appreciation, rising wages with exhaustion of its labour surplus, growing domestic demand and slowing international trade and gr...

A small part of the slowdown of growth in China in the recent decade may be due to the decline in population growth. The major factor contributing to China’s growth slowdown has been the reversal of earlier policies resulting in foreign exchange reserve accumulation. The resulting pressure for the currency to appreciate undermined the international...

The transformation of finance in recent decades has involved new property rights creating novel financial assets and transnational financial relations. Ascendant financialization, associated with financial globalization, has facilitated the capture of financial rents from changes in the prices of securities, held directly or indirectly, and often f...

Esta nota realiza un análisis breve de las propuestas del Informe sobre el Comercio y el Desarrollo 2019, de la Conferencia de la Naciones Unidas sobre Comercio y Desarrollo (UNCTAD, por sus siglas en inglés), el cual, con base en los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible planteados por la Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU) para 2030, reflexion...

This article critically reviews the World Bank’s reorientation from its traditional role as a lender for major development projects to become a broker for private investment. It highlights the follies of the Bank’s ‘billions to trillions’ agenda, rebranded as Maximizing Finance for Development, that seeks to use aid and public money to leverage pri...

Malaysia is more food secure today by various internationally accepted criteria, compared to the past especially the colonial period. All major foods are available in sufficient quantities to meet market demand, which should not be equated with human needs. Production has improved for poultry and vegetables, while rice production is supplemented by...

Ever since the adoption of TRIPS, it has become increasingly clear that the intellectual property provisions of the WTO do not effectively support the needs of developing countries. Instead, they principally serve transnational corporate interests disproportionately. We discuss some pathologies of the system for public health, especially the challe...

After the generally acknowledged failure of privatization, public–private partnerships (PPPs) have been promoted as a better means for private interests to secure lucrative rents at public expense. PPPs are supposed to reduce the fiscal burden, fill the resource gap for much needed investment to achieve economic development and to better provide in...

The United Nations views cooperatives as a key contributor to advancing the global development agenda, and seeks to work with cooperatives for the greater social good. Given their record of social empowerment and economic resilience, cooperatives promote a solidarity economy and people-centred development. Various potential areas of action are iden...

Privatization of state owned enterprises (SOEs) has been a key plank of the neo-liberal counter-revolution against economic development since the 1980s. Privatization’s promoters promised improved efficiency and improved fiscal balances, both supposedly contributing to higher economic growth. Privatization was also supposed to ensure improved consu...

Of the ten fastest growing economies since 1960, eight are in East Asia. As Haggard (2018) aptly demonstrates for Northeast Asia, two explanations account for this exceptional regional performance. On the one hand, neo-liberals committed to an Anglo-American night-watchman state (Krueger 1978; Bhagwati 1978; Edwards 1993; World Bank 1993; Pack and...

Income inequality in many countries, both developed and developing, has been on the rise since the 1980s after moderating for a good part of the twentieth century, especially after World War II. Wealth concentration has also become more skewed. Underlying these trends are falling labour shares of national income. While rising economic inequality th...

This paper reviews catch-up growth in various parts of the world, especially in the twentieth century, with a particular focus on what this implies for the Global South. In 1950, US per capita national income, adjusted for purchasing power, was nearly five times the world average. Since then, Western Europe and Japan have closed their per capita in...

Food systems are increasingly challenged to ensure food security and balanced diets for all, around the world. Almost 800 million people are chronically hungry, while over two billion people suffer from ‘hidden hunger’, with one or more micronutrient deficiencies. Meanwhile, over two billion people are overweight, with a third of them clinically ob...

The chapter reviews catch-up or converging growth in parts of the Global South. By 1950, US per capita national income, adjusted for purchasing power, was nearly five times the world average. Since then, Western Europe and Japan have closed their per capita income gaps with the USA. East Asia, South Asia and some other developing countries have als...

The 2008-2009 global financial crisis and other recent related crises since the end of the 20th century have their origins in the anarchic international financial liberalization and the ‘non-system’ which emerged following the unravelling of the Bretton Woods international monetary system. The multilateral United Nations system must fill the void t...

Other developing countries have been urged to emulate three Southeast Asian economies based on misleading analysis of the rapid growth and structural transformation of eight East Asian economies excluding China. Despite departing from the earlier conventional wisdom based on the Washington Consensus, the Bank’s analysis favours ‘functional interven...

Although President Trump has scuttled the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, it probably reflected the US transnational corporate elite’s consensus view of how its interests should be advanced through free trade agreements. Besides the likely modest and uneven growth impact of its trade measures, its enhanced intellectual property rights and extr...

The United Nations has long led efforts to enhance financing for development, but has been denied the ability to make real progress. The declining prospects of concluding the World Trade Organization’s Doha Development Round of trade negotiations in the face of lower primary commodity prices since 2014 have reversed the modest progress achieved ear...

Free trade agreements are generally presumed to enhance trade liberalization, but have effectively been used to enhance powerful corporate interests including non-trade matters. Trump’s actual trade policy may well be more pragmatic than his presidential campaign rhetoric. Nevertheless, international trade tensions continue to grow since the immedi...

The 1955 Bandung Afro-Asian solidarity conference symbolized the end of the colonial era and the beginning of new relations between the former colonial powers that had industrialized and the former colonies subsequently variously referred to as the developing countries, Third World or South. These changing relations also involved new discourses and...

Income and wealth inequalities in most countries - in the West, the former communist economies and in many developing states - have been growing in the last three decades. Inequalities in the late XIX century were much higher than before the rise of workers' movements in the West and the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the strong inequalities of the pre...

Colonial laws and policies radically transformed access to land in the Malay peasant economy. Colonial law recognized private property rights, making land a commodity to be owned, bought and sold. This undermined shifting agriculture and created conditions for landlordism and tenancy. When used as credit collateral, land could be lost through loan...

Income and wealth inequalities in most countries – in the West, the former communist economies and in the developing world –have been on the rise in the last three decades with some notable exceptions. Inequalities in the nineteenth century were much higher than before the Industrial Revolution. Following the rise of workers’ movements in the West...

Experience shows that special government efforts are needed to achieve rapid progress in the eradication of hunger, malnutrition and undernutrition. Reviewing how different countries have responded to the food security challenges they face, three main priority areas for public interventions stand out: social protection; raising the net incomes of s...

Situating the questions of globalization and imperialism in recent world economic and social developments, this essay begins with a review of how use of the term “imperialism” evolved over the twentieth century. The more recent trend towards economic liberalization has had an international dimension closely associated with the growing use of the te...

Some of the larger countries in the developing world, flushed with recent market recognition as ‘emerging market economies’ (EMEs) and corresponding easily reversible capital inflows, have pursued policies seemingly oblivious of lessons from recent financial crises, both in 1997–98 and 2008–09. India, Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia are now amon...

Malaysia has grown and changed a great deal since it was formed on 16 September 1963. It was then seen as an unlikely nation hastily put together as a federation of British controlled territories in the region. Brunei’s refusal to join at the eleventh hour and Singapore’s secession before its second birthday only seemed to confirm such doubts. Yet,...

The protracted global economic slowdown and the deep ecological crisis that the world finds itself in both call for a Global Green New Deal, similar to the New Deal of the United States that tackled the Great Depression. The 21st century New Deal must include developing countries and has to be economically, socially and ecologically sustainable.

Inter-country income inequalities now account for about two-thirds of world inequality, with intra-country inequality accounting for only a third. Global income inequality narrowed in the post-second world war decades before the Reagan-Thatcher revolutions and then the Washington Consensus shifted the balance of power. Recent trends in the function...

Some major trends in world income inequalities and relevant economic trends are reviewed here. In recent decades, there have been indications of a reversal of the growing income divergence between North and South after over half a millennium, especially in the last two centuries. Meanwhile, income inequalities within most countries have been growin...

These immortal lines from Allama Iqbal make me very humble standing before you today to deliver the Allama Iqbal lecture. Mr Chairman, Mr President, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, friends all,. thank you very much for this honour and opportunity to speak to you on a very difficult subject. I would like to emphasise that, thanks to Professor Na...

The 1944 Bretton Woods conference created new institutions for international economic governance. Though flawed, the system led to a golden age in postwar reconstruction, sustained economic growth, job creation, and postcolonial development. Yet financial liberalization since the 1970s has involved deregulation and globalization, which have exacerb...

This paper critically reviews the impact of globalization on sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) since the early 1980s. The large gains expected from opening up to international economic forces have, to date, been limited, and there have been significant adverse consequences. Foreign direct investment in SSA has been largely confined to resource—especially mi...

Malaysian economic development has been shaped by public policy in response to changing national and external conditions. Public investments peaked in the 1970s and early 1980s, until the policy reversals driven by sovereign debt concerns and new policy ideology fads. Foreign investments continued to be favoured after independence for ethnic politi...

Across-the-board trade liberalization often impedes, rather than fosters, development in the poorest countries.

This paper investigates if export growth in manufacturing in east Asia led to a removal of labour market rigidities and the institutional biases of gender-based discrimination as commonly argued. It challenges the orthodox perspective by looking more closely at industrial employment in the region by gender. Gender discrimination in the region's lab...

Monograph Series The CODESRIA Monograph Series is published to stimulate debate, comments, and further research on the subjects covered. The series serves as a forum for works based on the findings of original research, which however are too long for academic journals but not long enough to be published as books, and which deserve to be accessible...

Where large-scale investments are needed, especially for infrastructure projects, public-private partnerships (PPPs) have been touted as an option. With encouragement by the international financial institutions, PPPs have been promoted in developing countries, especially those facing large public sector debt burdens. PPPs can be very diverse and co...

Paul Krugman's contribution in the development of "new" trade theory pushed the profession beyond the overly simplistic assumption of perfect competition. Since then, new trade theory has tended to be integrated and reconciled with traditional trade theory, undermining its deployment in support of successful strategic trade policy intervention.

A number of models – developed in particular in the World Bank–show large gains for developing countries through trade liberalisation at the World Trade Organisation. These models are, however, not just simplistic, they also suffer from a number of fundamental flaws. The actual gains are far smaller for developing countries and far greater for the...

This paper critically reviews the impact of globalization on Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) since the early 1980s. The large gains expected from opening up to international economic forces have, to date, been limited, and there have been significant adverse consequences. FDI in SSA has been largely confined to resource, especially mineral, extraction, ev...

Various different and sometimes contradictory lessons have been drawn from the 1997-1998 East Asian crisis experiences. The ideological implications and political differences involved have complicated the possibility of drawing shared lessons from the crises. The seeming calm and increased growth in most developing countries in the period since 200...

This chapter uses the term capital management techniques to refer to two complementary and often overlapping types of financial policies: policies that govern international private capital flows, and those that enforce prudential management of domestic financial institutions. While the management of inflows has recently gained some respectability,...

Among newly industrialising economies, Malaysia has mounted notably comprehensive efforts to build a national innovation system. Despite continuously updating Science and Technology (S&T) policies to reflect prevailing understandings of successful innovation strategy, its achievements in technology development are mixed. Invoking Ergas' (1987) bina...

In the wake of the east Asian financial crisis in mid-July 1997, not only were the initial policy initiatives taken by the Malaysian government to counter portfolio capital flight ill-conceived, the currency and capital control measures seem to have been motivated by political considerations and the desire to protect well-connected businesses. The...

Rapid growth and structural change have reduced poverty in East Asian economies. Income inequality has been low in Korea and Taiwan, but has risen in recent years with economic liberalization. In the Southeast Asian economies of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, poverty has declined, while income inequality trends have varied, rising most clearly i...

Malaysia did not turn to the International Monetary Fund for assistance when pressure from the 1997-1998 East Asian financial crisis hit the coun- try. The country was less vulnerable than its neighbors, not least because it had earlier imposed limits on foreign borrowing and prudential regula- tions and supervision of the banking sector. Although...

Malaysia’s management of its economy is often seen as being rather unconventional and inconsistent. Even before the controversial September 1998 imposition of capital controls, Malaysia’s economic management style was described as unorthodox. After the events of May 1969, the government formulated the New Economic Policy (NEP) to ‘eradicate’ (reduc...

Unlike the other East Asian economies which sought IMF emergency credit facilities after borrowing heavily from abroad, the Malaysian authorities simply never had to go to the Fund as prudential regulations introduced earlier had limited foreign borrowings, especially short-term credit. Instead, its crisis was due to massive portfolio investment in...

Foreign capital inflows (FCI) are supposed to bring positive effects by augmenting investible funds, domestic savings and foreign exchange earnings, thus closing the savings and foreign exchange gaps. FCI may also have undesirable effects on the domestic savings rate as well as on the recipient's balance of payments position. This study examines bo...

Malaysia’s New Economic Policy (NEP) was announced in 1970 as part of a package of measures introduced after the political crisis of May 1969. It sought to ‘eradicate poverty’ and ‘restructure society to eliminate the identification of race with economic function’ in order to create the conditions for national unity. Since then, poverty in Malaysia...

This paper uses the term, capital management techniques, to refer to two complementary (and often overlapping) types of financial policies: policies that govern international private capital flows and those that enforce prudential management of domestic financial institutions. The paper shows that regimes of capital management take diverse forms an...