My guess is that this initiative could make some headway (it presumably has
already been able to attract some funding) because finance capitalism is
actually swinging away from free market ideology.
Free market ideology was useful for impose cuts in the social wage in the
developed capitalist economies in the 80's and 90's when they were in
competition with the fast developing countries. It was also useful in
overcoming protectionism by developing countries against the domination of
the advanced capitalist countries. But it really does not fit the
monopolistic bias of finance capitalism. What finance capital needs is a
framework for managing the global economy. Stiglitz could help provide this.
Chris Burford
From NYTimes this morning
NEW YORK As the chief economist of the World Bank in the late 1990s, Joseph
Stiglitz got a firsthand look at how policy was made at its sister
institution, the International Monetary Fund, and he was dismayed.
Decisions, he said, were made on the basis of ideology rather than sound
economic reasoning.
Now Stiglitz has set up the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia
University's School for International and Public Affairs, where he is a
professor. It is bringing together economists, political scientists and
policy analysts from around the world to re-examine the prevailing wisdom
about development and to come up with alternative strategies.
"There's not a Brookings or an American Enterprise Institute for the
developing world," said Stiglitz, co-recipient of the 2001 Nobel Memorial
Prize in Economic Science.
It is an ambitious and controversial undertaking. Stiglitz is the IMF's
most visible critic, and the Fund has made little secret of its disdain for
him.
Undeterred, Stiglitz is taking aim at the so-called Washington consensus, a
package of free-market, free-trade policies that critics say the IMF and
World Bank have imposed on Third World countries.
"We disagree with the World Bank-IMF idea that there's one approach that's
right for all countries," Stiglitz said.
Rather, he said, there is a range of policies that must be selected based
on conditions in each country.
Stiglitz's effort to rewrite the textbook on development is being conducted
through 14 committees that are re-evaluating such critical issues as
bankruptcy, poverty, privatization and trade. For each, a dozen or so
specialists from the Northern and Southern hemispheres are meeting to
compare the experiences of different countries and ponder what policies
have worked where. The goal of each group is to produce a series of papers
that will provide a fresh look at the components of growth.
Stiglitz hopes his institute will be more than a paper exercise. The goal
is expand the policy debate beyond the usual elite of government officials
and business executives to include civic leaders, activists, academics and
journalists. So far, forums have been held in Ethiopia, Moldova, Nigeria,
the Philippines, Serbia and Vietnam. At the Nigeria session, a key theme
was the need to raise living standards in the countryside, where most
Nigerians live. Soon after, Stiglitz recalled, Nigeria's agricultural
minister obtained an increase in money for agriculture.
Still, his approach causes concern among some critics, such as Jagdish
Bhagwati, a colleague of Stiglitz's at Columbia, that the institute is not
including people "who really have alternative points of view." Its
committee on trade, for example, "has none of the big trade people,"
including himself, Bhagwati said.
"The Initiative for Policy Dialogue," he said, "is in danger of turning
into the Initiative for Policy Monologue."
