I was at a talk by Joel Bakan, writer and co-creator of the documentary The Corporation today here in Berlin. In the spirit of all that, let me share this story that has been sitting on my desktop for the past couple of days. By Venkatesh Rao: On 8 June, a Scottish banker named Alexander… Read More »
The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), originally signed in 1994, gave developing countries until 2005 to bring their IP laws in line with the new legislation. With respect to drugs, Indian, Brazilian, and Thai pharmaceutical firms could no longer copy drugs that American and European firms had created. Before 2005, however,… Read More »
This article was originally written for www.tradeinvestnigeria.com. In May, an Indian trade mission, led by Mr. Ravi Bangar, the deputy permanent representative of India to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), paid a visit to Mr. Jubril Martins-Kuye, Nigeria’s Minister for Commerce and Industry. One of the major issues they discussed was the possibility of India… Read More »
I just read this on the World Bank CommGap blog: In India, petty corruption is pervasive – people often face situations where they are asked to pay bribes for public services that should be provided free. 5th Pillar distributes zero rupee notes in the hopes that ordinary Indians can use these notes as a means… Read More »
Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution blogger and George Mason University economics professor, writes in New York Times of January 2: Putting aside the United States, which ranks third, the four most populous countries are China, India, Indonesia andBrazil, accounting for more than 40 percent of the world’s people. And all four have made great strides. Indonesia had solid economic growth… Read More »
From New York Times: Exporting waste illegally to poor countries has become a vast and growing international business, as companies try to minimize the costs of new environmental laws, like those here, that tax waste or require that it be recycled or otherwise disposed of in an environmentally responsible way. Rotterdam, the busiest port in Europe,… Read More »
Abstract The report provides a comparative study of the impact of Asian companies on the two leading oil producing countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria and Angola. The report shows that Asian companies that gained a foothold in the Nigerian oil sector in return for their commitments to invest in downstream and infrastructure projects failed to… Read More »
This is on two different levels. One: There is an attack going on in Mumbai, and the exact thing that the attackers want – full coverage, and even commentary that reminds one of a football match – was given to them. See what my good friend Kiran (an Indian who was in India during the… Read More »
I need help to think about what could make African countries attractive for production. China and India have the shere size of their populations, and China in particular has notoriously cheap labour… what does Africa have?