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RISK AND CRISIS IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

BUSM119

Course Description

Recent tumultuous developments in the global political economy have raised fundamental questions about the institutional arrangements that underpin our modern society, and their ability to manage the risks and crises associated to it. These political, technological, and socio-economic developments are not unrelated; they are fundamentally intertwined. Such complex issues reiterate the need for interdisciplinary study of risk. This is a crucial starting point for making sense of interrelated developments across diverse institutional contexts in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. This course offers a general introduction to the history, theory, and practice of risk analysis and crisis management in a variety of institutions globally. We take an interdisciplinary approach to some of the important questions in this field, drawing from history, political economy, sociology, geography, and anthropology. While reflecting on the avenues through which students can use this knowledge in their professional careers, this module offers students a comprehensive and contextual understanding of risk and crisis, including financial, technological, environmental, and geopolitical risk, inter alia, situating it within a broader set of institutions such as firms, corporations, NGOs, states, international organisations, etc., in order to make sense of what is specific about the causes, evolutions, and responses to risk in our global political economy.

Learning Objectives

In this class, we ask you to examine conventional knowledge and engage critically with the assumptions behind theories, policies, and corporate choices. This is also meant to address risk beyond the mere presentist purview of corporate management practices, insofar as students in the MSc Management and others programmes may both i) work in a broad range of institutions, and ii) will have to understand and engage in their professional lives with a variety of emerging risks, which the conventional risk management literature broaches at times only superficially. We hope that, by the end of the course, students understand that risk management is not engineering, with mechanical solutions to social and economic problems, but rather always a fraught endeavor, rife with contradictions and contestations.

Assessments

• Case Analysis Presentation

Students—in groups of 5—will present on three case studies related to the respective module unit, on weeks 4, 8 and 11. These cases may be chosen by students, or selected from a list of available cases on QMPlus. Presentations will run for 5 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of Q&A with the rest of the class. The average of the two best marks in the semester will make up students’ presentation grade. (30% of the final grade)

• Final Exam

The final exam will be scheduled during QMUL’s exam period at the end of the semester. Students will need to answer 2 questions in 2 hours, from a list of available questions applied to 4 module sessions. (70% of the final grade)

• Regular attendance and active participation are expected. Students should come prepared, having completed the required reading. A few question prompts about each week’s readings and case studies will be posted on the QMPlus forum, and students are encouraged to reply on the online forum by midnight on the day of classes with a couple of paragraphs, informally outlining notes on the readings and case studies. These might offer comparisons between readings, summaries, questions the readings left you with, as well as the occasional rant.

Resources

• QMUL Library: Consult with librarians for advice on related readings and access to them.

• QMUL Academic Skills Centre: Hosted in the library, the Academic Skills Centre is an excellent resource for advice on writing, in particular but not exclusively for non-native English speakers. https://www.qmul.ac.uk/library/academic-skills/

• Student Well-Being: The well-being of students is of primary importance. If you are facing any challenges related to your physical or mental health, or social and economic obstacles, please do not hesitate to get in touch to discuss ways we can put you in the best possible position to succeed in this module.

Course Schedule

UNIT 1 – CONCEPTUALISING RISK IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY

Week 1 – Introduction: Risk Society and the ‘Polycrisis’

Further Reading

• Beck, U. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Sage Publications. Excerpts from Chapters 1-2.

• Janzwood, S. and T. Homer-Dixon. 2022. “What is a global polycrisis?” Cascade Institute

• Hayek, F. 1945. “The Use of Knowledge in Society”. The American Economic Review.

• Deringer, W. 2018. Calculated Values: Finance, Politics and the Quantitative Age. Harvard University Press.

Case Studies

• Union Carbide chemical leak in Bhopal

• Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine procurement during the Covid-19 pandemic

Week 2 – Financialisation and Risk

Required Reading

• Bhatia, J. 2022. “The Indian road to financialisation: a case study of the Indian telecommunication sector”, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 46(5): 1025–1044.

Further Reading

• Dutta, S. 2018. ‘Financialisation: A Primer’. Available at: https://www.tni.org/en/publication/financialisation-a-primer  

• Kaltenbrunner, A., & Painceira, J. P. 2017. Subordinated Financial Integration and Financialisation in Emerging Capitalist Economies: The Brazilian Experience. New Political Economy, 23(3), 290–313.

• Baker A. et al. 2020. ‘Against Hollow Firms: repurposing the corporation for a more resilient economy.’ Centre for Research on Accounting and Finance in Context (CRAFiC), University of Sheffield [https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/polopoly_fs/1.892482!/file/Against-Hollow-Firms.pdf]. Executive Summary

• van der Zwan, N. 2014. ‘Making sense of financialization’, Socio-Economic Review, 12(1), pp. 99–129.

Case Studies

• Indian telecoms and Reliance/Jio

• Thames Water

Week 3 –Climate-Related Financial Risks

Required Reading

Christophers, B. 2017 “Climate Change and Financial Instability: Risk Disclosure and the Problematics of Neoliberal Governance”. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 107(5), 1108–1127.

Further Reading

• Newell, P. (2024). Towards a more transformative approach to climate finance. Climate Policy, 1–12.

• Chenet, H., Ryan-Collins, J. and van Lerven, F. (2019). Climate-related financial policy in a world of radical uncertainty: Towards a precautionary approach. UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, Working Paper Series (IIPP WP 2019-13). Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/wp2019-13

• Taylor, N. 2022. ‘Making financial sense of the future’: actuaries and the management of climate-related financial risk. New Political Economy, 28(1), 57–75.

Case Studies

• HSBC TCFD 2020 sustainability disclosure [https://www.privatebanking.hsbc.com/content/dam/privatebanking/gpb/about-us/esg/210223-task-force-on-climate-related-financial-disclosures-tcfd-update-2020.pdf]

• BlackRock’s ESG integration

Week 4 - Group Presentations

UNIT 2 – ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND APPROACHES TO SUSTAINABILITY

Week 5 – The Political Economy of Energy Transitions

Required Reading

• Newell, P. 2020. “The business of rapid transition” Wires Climate Change 11(6)

Further Reading

• Mann, G. and R. Wainwright. 2018. Climate Leviathan. Verso Books. Chapter 2.

• Krahe, M. 2022. The Whole Field. Markets, Planning, and Coordinating the Green Economy. Phenomenal World.

Case Studies

• Total Energies carbon offsetting in Republic of the Congo

• Pavagada Ultra Mega Solar Park in Karnataka, India

Week 6 – Reading Week

Week 7 – Food Security and Agrarian Questions

Required Reading

• Clapp, J. 2024. “The global food crisis in the age of catastrophe” Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung

Further Reading

• Patel, R. & J. Moore, 2017. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. Black, Inc. Chapter 5.

• Ajl, M. 2018. “Delinking, food sovereignty, and populist agronomy: notes on an intellectual history of the peasant path in the Global South” Review of African Political Economy 45(155): 64-84.

• Weis, T. 2010. “The accelerating biophysical contradictions of industrial capitalist agriculture”. Journal of Agrarian Change 10(3): 315-341

• Cullather, N. 2010. The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia. Harvard University Press.

Case Studies

• Indian farm bills and farmers’ protests in 2020-21

• Industrial farming in Mato Grosso, Brazil

Week 8 – Group Presentations

UNIT 3 – EMERGING RISK LANDSCAPES

Week 9 – Governing Risks in a Global Economy

Required Reading

• Schindler, S., Alami, I., DiCarlo, J., Jepson, N., Rolf, S., Bayırbağ, M. K., Zhao, Y. 2023. “The Second Cold War: US-China Competition for Centrality in Infrastructure, Digital, Production, and Finance Networks” Geopolitics 29(4): 1083–1120.

Further Reading

• Roberts, A. and N. Lamp. 2021. Six Faces of Globalization. Harvard University Press. Excerpts from Chapters 3-9.

• Panitch, L. and Gindin, S. 2013. The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire. Verso Books. Pp. 1-21.

• Bair, J. 2005. “Global Capitalism and Commodity Chains: Looking Back, Going Forward” Competition & Change 9(2): 153-180.

• Durand, C. 2017. Fictitious Capital. Verso Books. Excerpts from Chapters 2-3.

• Arrighi, G. 1978. “Towards a Theory of Capitalist Crisis” New Left Review 1(3).  

• Bair, J., Ponte, S., Seabrooke, L., & Wigan, D. (2023). Entangled chains of global value and wealth. Review of International Political Economy, 30(6), 2423–2439.

• Klein, M.C. & Pettis, M. 2020. Trade Wars are Class Wars, New Haven: Yale University Press.

Case Studies

• The Tik Tok ban in India

• The Nord Stream pipelines sabotage

Week 10 – Automation and the Future of Work

Required Reading

• Spencer, DA. 2024 “AI, Automation and the Lightening of Work”, AI & Society

Further Reading

• Spencer DA. 2023. Automation and well-being: bridging the gap between economics and business ethics. Journal of Business Ethics. 271-281 187

• Anner et al. 2019. ‘For a Future of Work with Dignity: A Critique of the World Bank Development Report, The Changing Nature of Work’, Global Labour Journal 10(1).

• Benanav, A. 2019. ‘Automation and the Future of Work—1’, New Left Review

• Ford, M. 2015. The Rise of the Robots. One World Publications

• Susskind, D. 2020. A World Without Work, London: Allen Lane.

Case Studies

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Week 11 – Group Presentations