John Loxley

Structural adjustment in Africa: reflections on Ghana and Zambia

An analysis of the experience of Ghana and Zambia in operating structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) illustrates well the debate taking place on the appropriateness of these programmes in the context of African economies. Both countries faced major economic crises in the 1980s. While supporters of SAPs see Ghana as the success story of World Bank and IMF policies, Zambia is regarded as a prime example of failure because of non‐adoption of these policies. However, this article shows why in the short run, Ghana could have been expected to perform better than Zambia anyway. It further shows that the Ghana programme is not likely to be replicable by other countries and that even in Ghana, the relative success of the programme may not be sustainable. In analysing Zambias experience with an IMF/World Bank programme, it is argued that her economic structure made short‐term gains from adjustment impossible and led to the programmes abandonment in favour of a government programme which itself failed to address...

Public-Private Partnerships After the Global Financial Crisis: Ideology Trumping Economic Reality

John Loxley’s article “Public-Private Partnerships After the Global Financial Crisis: Ideology Trumping Economic Reality” provides an overall assessment of public-private partnerships (PPPs), with a particular emphasis on their use in Canada and the issues that have emerged in the initial phases of the crisis. The paper summarizes the dimensions of PPP funding, their mechanics, and offers an insightful critique of their effects on public finances.

Are public--private partnerships (PPPs) the answer to Africa's infrastructure needs?

There is a large and growing infrastructure gap in Africa which has, inevitably, led to the exploration of alternative ways of financing infrastructural development. Public– private partnerships (PPPs) have been proposed as a possible major solution. Multilateral bodies within Africa, such as the African Union (AU), the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) have all endorsed their use, prompted by financial and technical support from the World Bank, the OCED (2012), and by endorsement, albeit a cautious one, by the IMF (IMF, 2004). This paper explores the nature of PPPs, the extent of their use and their location by sector in Africa. It also examines the arguments advanced for the promotion of PPPs and looks critically at them. It concludes that great caution should be exercised in the use of PPPs.

African immigrants in Canada: a profile of human capital, income and remittance behaviour

Abstract This article provides a profile of African immigrants in Canada, with a focus on human capital and remittance behaviour. Our results show that about one-third of African immigrants in Canada have a Bachelors degree or higher, and that the stock of African immigrants increased by 31 per cent over a five-year period, while total remittances from Canada to Africa doubled. Results from our quantitative analysis show that family income, age, education at landing, sponsorship, immigrant status and membership of social organisations affect the likelihood of recent immigrants remitting to family members in Africa. From a development perspective, remittance fees were found to be high; this undermines the potential role of remittances in Africas development and calls for a review of the existing regulatory framework on money transfer.

Reflections on change and continuity at the IMF

Let me begin by saying how honoured I am to receive the John Kenneth Galbraith Prize in Economics, and to follow in the footsteps of Mel Watkins and Kari Levitt, whose work I have long admired and whose friendship I value very highly. More than that, their academic interests and mine coincide in some important ways and they have for many years been very influential in shaping my ideas. This seems like an opportune time to reflect, as both Mel and Kari did, on the influences in my life, on the circumstances and people that have shaped my intellectual work and my social activism. I have been fortunate to have had supportive colleagues in my various work environments, both in Manitoba and across Canada. Soccer, too, has been an important influence in my life. Playing with the progressive Crescentwood Saturday soccer team has been good for both body and soul. Coaching young and youth players, both boys and girls, has been humbling. Supporting Sheffield Wednesday at professional club level and Canada at international level has required patience and an unbelievable degree of optimism. But the foremost influence was that I was born into a large and loving working class family. My father died from industrial disease. We relied heavily on public housing, public health and public education. My political views and my academic preoccupations and values have been shaped by this background. The second most important influence on my academic and political life was my experience in Africa. It was my work in Africa that led me to think seriously about how the international monetary system functions and to devote much of my life to studying it and arguing for its reform. What I would like to do today is spend some time reflecting on that experience and relate it to contemporary developments in the international monetary system. In the process, I will touch upon some of the difficulties of being a progressive economist working practically and theoretically in this area. I will also draw some links between my experience in Africa and my interest in alternative budgets in Canada, and between proposals made in the Alternative Federal Budget (AFB) and the recent debate about the taxation of banks as a means of stabilising the international monetary system.

Tribute to Professor Paul Phillips (1938-2008)

Professor Paul Arthur Phillips died on 16 July 2008 in Vernon, British Columbia. Paul graduated from the London School of Economics in 1967 with a PhD in Labour Economics and Industrial Relations. He joined the Department of Economics, University of Manitoba, on 1 July 1969, having spent two years as the Research Director of the BC Federation of Labour. He retired on 1 January 2004 and was appointed Professor Emeritus in 2005.

Neo-Conservatism and the Growth of Global Disequilibrium

The immediate consequences of the ideological ascendancy of monetarism and its simultaneous adoption as policy in most major capitalist countries was, of course, the depression of demand in the North and a rise in real interest rates to record levels. This found expression in huge balance of payments deficits for countries of the South as their export earnings fell and as interest payments on foreign debt rose. It was this combination of factors which precipitated the debt crisis, as the current account deficit of the fifteen most heavily indebted nations rose to

Alternative Paradigms: Peripheral Views and Views from the Periphery

50 billion in 1981 (Table 3.1). From 1981 to 1983 real per capita incomes of Third World countries fell (by 1.8%), and fell especially sharply in Sub-Saharan Africa (11%) and Latin America (10%) as exports fell, as debt servicing costs rose dramatically and as real flows of official assistance also declined (IMF, WEO, October 1989, p. 79). Only the countries of Asia escaped relatively unscathed because of their larger domestic economies, lower external debt burdens and proximity to Japan which avoided the worst of the recession; their per capita incomes increased by 13.9 per cent in these three years.

Global Expansion and Differential Integration: The End of the South?

The assumption underlying international economic relations since World War II has been, and continues to be, that economic growth is both desirable and necessary. Steadily rising living standards, in both North and South, are deemed desirable in and of themselves and, by extension, rising per capita incomes are assumed to signify an improvement in human welfare. Growth in the North is considered to be relatively autonomous of growth in the South, whereas rising incomes in the South are held to require expansion of economic activity in the North. Increasingly, the orthodox or mainstream literature also advocates economic growth as a prerequisite for dealing with poverty in the South. High rates of population growth, which are considered to be caused by factors other than income levels, are also held responsible for low per capita incomes in the South.

Reordering Global Relations: Threats to the South

Since 1950, there has been a vast expansion of international trade, investment and bank lending. World trade has expanded sixtyfold in current dollar terms, sixfold or more in real terms (United Nations, WES, 1994, p. 2 and p. 42). Comparable data for international investment and credit flows are not available but between 1970 and 1986 US-owned assets, of all types, abroad rose 6.5 fold to