Global Economy, Regulation and Development (GEARED)

The research unit on Global Economy, Regulation and Development examines international development in the setting of current transformations in the global economy. Our work seeks to contribute to an understanding of economic development and capitalist dynamics in emerging market economies and developing countries. However, in all areas of engagement we strive to include analysis at the level of (a) the world economy and (b) the systemically important western states, as the larger context for understanding the development process.
 
GEARED addresses two of the three main themes of DIIS’s mandate: foreign policy and development policy. An understanding of key issues in foreign policy is enhanced by knowledge of macroeconomic policies in dominant countries, as well as by analysis of the attempted coordination (regionally and internationally) of these policies. Similarly, in-depth knowledge of the political economies of large emerging market economies, including  China, Brazil, India and Russia, is becoming increasingly crucial for well-informed foreign policy-making.
 
With respect to development policy, a  focus of our work is to examine how the increasing economic power of large emerging market economies (above all, but not only, China), impacts on global organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. And also vice versa: how do the changing governance structure and lending policies of these organizations  affect developing countries? What does the increasing bilateral engagement of large emerging market economies – both between themselves, with low-income countries and with western countries – mean for the economic development strategies of low-income countries?
 
These two broad sets of issues intersect in crucial ways. What impact do new modes of financial regulation and macroeconomic coordination in Western countries have on the development prospects of large emerging market economies and developing countries? And what impact might it have on Western countries and low-income countries, economically and politically, if the dynamic growth of large emerging economies such as China, Brazil and India, was to not just slow down but break down, for a more or less prolonged period of time?
 
The group yet has little ongoing research that relates directly to the third policy area of the DIIS mandate, security policy. But the continuing  Euro crisis – with its increasing levels of unemployment and social unrest – and the recent awarding of the Nobel peace prize to the EU, should remind us of the intimate  relation between economic prosperity and political stability.  More generally, there are few drivers of international conflict as persistent as the fight for resources and technologies as means to generate and capture wealth. International political diplomacy is the main instrument for short-term amelioration in these conflicts; but economic development is the main route to longer-term amelioration, and that brings us back to global economic governance, including private as well as public capital flows and the regimes and organizations which govern them.
 
Jakob Vestergaard, Head of Research Unit
 
About the research unit