This chapter starts by delimiting the scope of the book and making clear that we focus on various types of domestic political violence but that international wars are touched upon as well. We clearly define these terms and provide examples that illustrate the differences between distinct forms of violence, before moving to a discussion of the costs that these forms of violence impose on society. Strikingly, some people believe that wars and conflicts are good business. They are not. This chapter shows that wars not only destroy millions of innocent lives, but they are also poison for the economy. In particular, wars may be lucrative for the few but disastrous for the many. The detriments of war are manifold and include human, economic and social costs. This is illustrated by a series of historical examples. Drawing on recent cost estimates, it is also shown that the costs of a given war spread well beyond the borders of the country at war, with continental if not worldwide consequences.

Chapter 1 sets the scene for this book, providing the requisite background for the chapters that follow. It begins with a short overview of the military regime, focusing on repression and the gradual restoration of democratic freedoms, highlighting the role the latter played in facilitating the country’s burgeoning environmental movement. It then turns to the dictatorship’s plans for industrial growth and energy production. The chapter closes with an overview of the symbolism that surrounds big dams and an introduction to the influential generals and engineers responsible for orchestrating the dictatorship’s dam-building campaign. This chapter also lays the groundwork for the book’s first argument, that political pressures encouraged the military regime to build big dams quickly and with little regard for their social and environmental impacts.

This chapter analyzes the importance of insolvency law for the promotion of economic growth as well as the goals and strategies of insolvency law. It is argued that, even though insolvency law seeks to solve similar economic problems across jurisdictions, the intensity of these problems and the desirability of a particular insolvency response depend on a variety of country-specific and firm-specific factors. Unfortunately, many emerging economies have adopted insolvency laws that usually replicate practices existing in countries with totally different market and institutional environments. As a result, it is not surprising that insolvency law has failed to deliver the expected outcome in emerging economies. The chapter concludes by providing a general overview of the structure of the book and the underlying reasons justifying the need to reinvent insolvency law in emerging economies and beyond.

This chapter provides a macroeconomic perspective of artificial intelligence’s impacts on labor markets and economic growth – although the analysis remains grounded in microeconomic functions. In this chapter, we provide an economic growth model wherein AI as a possible substitute for human labor is modeled, taking into account the nature of AI as an automation technology. This goes to the heart of the current focus of economists on AI, namely its implications for labor markets, and specifically unemployment and skills requirements. The crucial points that we make here are that economists need to go further than indirectly modeling AI through assumptions on substitution elasticities and need to take the specific nature (narrow focus) of AI into explicit account.

In this chapter, we take the production function enriched with AI abilities from Chapter 4, and apply it to study the implications for progress in AI on growth and inequality. The crucial finding we discuss in this chapter is that understanding the nature of AI as narrow ML and its effect on key macroeconomic outcomes depends on having appropriate assumptions in growth models. In particular, we discuss the appropriateness of assuming, as most standard endogenous growth models today do, that economies are supply driven. If they are not supply driven, then demand constraints, which can arise from the diffusion of AI, may restrict growth. Through this, we show why expectations that AI will may lead to “explosive” economic growth is unlikely to materialize. We show that by considering the nature of AI as specific (and not general) AI and making appropriate assumptions that reflect the digital AI economy better, economic outcomes may be characterized by slow growth, rising inequality, and rather full employment – conditions that rather well describe economies in the West.

Chapter 3 analyses the normativity of sustainable development in international law and politics as expressed beyond the questions on its present (domestic) manifestations or the endless struggle to place the concept within general legal (normative) registers. It highlights how international law tends to subordinate non-Western experiences in its elevation of sustainable development into a global standard. What emerges from this process is that the more the world pursues sustainable development in its current form, the more we unwittingly contribute to the global dissemination of a particular strand of Eurocentrism. Sustainable development thus reveals itself as an amalgam of power and knowledge while simultaneously establishing itself as a vital component in international legal governance. What emerges in this chapter is that, although the concept of sustainable development is always at the forefront of international public discourse, little is done, in fact, to achieve its presumed objectives. Thus, while sustainable development’s quick ascent to become a universalist concept is central to this book, the concept’s character must be understood as quietly operating to mute global ecological violence that disproportionately affects marginalised peoples in the Global South.

Over the last quarter-century, the relations between Australia and Latin America, while not intense, clearly have thickened and deepened. And the pace of this thickening and deepening is quickening. The most obvious manifestation is in the economic realm, in trade and investment. But our research indicates that in more obscure areas, such as cultural exchange, education, and environmental issues, much is happening and there is every reason to expect that the contact will expand. That said, any informed observer of Australia’s relations with Latin America would be struck by how little each knows about the other, how recent and relatively superficial the contacts are, and consequently how tenuous they could remain unless both the Australians and the Latin Americans invest further substantial effort. This effort cannot be limited to the material – trade and investment – but must include education at all levels to overcome the barriers of language and culture, of limited transport, of competing economies, of stereotypes.

The chapter documents how U.S. economic growth, labor productivity growth, and labor’s share of output have evolved over time. Issues concerning the estimation of the economy’s productive potential are discussed, including problems associated with factor aggregation, the theoretical and empirical use of production functions, and growth accounting. The role that estimates of potential output should play in the policy process is also considered.

This chapter surveys the economic growth experience of Iberia since the early nineteenth century. After more than a century dominated by sluggish growth and divergence from Western Europe, there was a substantial acceleration in GDP and per capita GDP growth of both Iberian economies c. 1950. As a result, in the very long term, Iberia has partially closed its initial gap with the Western European core. The chapter also shows that, in the case of Spain, the early 1950s represent a divide between a hundred years of moderate growth dominated by factor accumulation, and half a century of fast growth led by total factor productivity (TFP). By contrast, this intensive model of growth was not shared by Portugal, where per capita GDP increases so far have been mainly associated to factor accumulation, rather than to TFP increases. Finally, new estimates of regional historical GDPs show that regional inequality emerged after the first long wave of modern economic growth and market integration. By 1950, the geographical patterns of regional inequality were well established, and since then they have just been consolidated. As a result, a poor Iberia has emerged that spreads over a continuous area around the border between Spain and Portugal.

To say that good institutions are a fundamental condition to foster economic growth is close to platitude. However, it is important to explain how it happens, and therefore the main aim of this chapter is to present and discuss the role played by both private and public institutions in decision making processes related to the implementation of economic policies encouraging economic growth. By discussing the lessons from the Iberian experience throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the chapter tries to disclose the similarities and differences between both countries, with a main focus on the way how the institutional environment helps to explain the circumstances that favour or hinder economic performance. This comparative approach begins with the age of the liberal revolutions in the early years of the nineteenth century and closes with the processes of democracy building and European integration in the two last decades of the twentieth century. The study of institutional changes and continuities in Spain and Portugal during this long period offers multiple opportunities to better understand the articulation between the economic and business environment, the dynamics of the markets and the economic policies designed or implemented by the state, in fulfilment of its regulatory role.

Chapter 9 discusses the arguments economists make about how the level and changes in the level of education in the labor force affect economic growth, including the basic human capital model with “externalities,” and the endogenous growth model, in which higher levels of education increase the capacity of the society to accumulate new knowledge, which, in turn, increases the rate of return to capital and contributes to higher rates of growth. The chapter also analyzes the important political economic discussions underlying the mechanisms through which higher levels or higher quality of education translate into higher rates of economic growth. One main point in these discussions is whether increased education or higher cognitive skills in the labor force is a key causal factor generating higher economic growth rates by raising labor productivity or the rate of innovation, hence promoting physical capital investment. Alternatively, physical capital investment may be correlated with education and skills in the labor force, but may itself be the driving force behind economic growth.