By Raghbendra Jha, Emeritus Professor, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics, Australian National University

Despite some obstacles like the crises of the late 1980s and early 1990s, developing economies, the global economy, and international trade experienced steady growth during the period 1980-2000. It was widely claimed that this was partly the result of the adoption of the doctrine of the globalisation by a large majority of developing countries.

However, things changed dramatically with the food price crisis of 2007.  Quantitative restrictions on food exports were imposed by many countries.  At a philosophical level the importance of supply side effects was underscored at a global level.  This realisation was further reinforced by the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09 when credit collapse on a global scale led to serious supply side impediments to credit growth.  Expansionary fiscal and monetary policies were put together in many countries and the G-20 group of nations was formed to nurse the global economy back to health. However, this led to the massive pile up of debt – both public and private – in many countries and some of them experienced debt crises as a consequence. It was becoming eminently clear that while demand side policies could be put together quickly, this approach had its limitations and attention to the supply side was essential.

With the large-scale dominance of global supply chains addressing supply side shortcomings would require global effort.  That this was in short supply was quickly made clear during the global COVID pandemic of 2020-22. All countries in the world were faced with an economic challenge and a public health challenge that fed on each other.  Addressing one challenge would exacerbate the other.  Reducing the economic challenge by removing lockdowns and allowing people to go to work would spread the virus further and enforcing lockdowns to slow down the progress of the virus would exacerbate the economic crisis. Developing countries were in a particularly vulnerable position since they had a general paucity of resources to meet the economic and public health challenges and had low capacity to produce vaccines and administer these to their populations.

Other supply side constraints developed soon.  Three illustrations of this would suffice. Public Protective Equipment (PPEs) needed to protect health care professionals who were looking after COVID patients were supplied largely by the country from which the virus emerged- China. China needed PPEs for its own needs and quickly cut off supplies to the rest of the world. When the vaccine was finally produced there was widespread hoarding in some developed countries in order to address their own domestic needs. This was self-defeating in a way because in a globalised world new variants of the virus could develop in under vaccinated populations anywhere in the world. Furthermore, there was (and still is) uncertainty about the efficacy of some of these vaccines. Finally, just as the end of the pandemic was in sight, a ferocious European war between Russia and Ukraine has disrupted supply chains the world over, particularly with respect to food and fuel.  This has fed into the inflationary processes in many individual countries as well as globally.   

Under such circumstances, countries started abandoning the idea of global supply chains and started cultivating more limited supply chains with countries they could rely on.  The importance of supply side policies was writ large all over.

This realisation spilled over onto the area of macroeconomic management.  Expansionary fiscal and monetary policies put in place to stimulate economies during the pandemic and inadequate attention to stimulating the supply side led to the build-up of massive excess demand in many countries. The resulting inflation has persisted well after the worst effects of the pandemic are over.  Interest rates have been raised globally to control this inflation with the result that many economies are slowing down and some of them are facing the threat of a recession. Public and private debt have spiralled in most countries.

Against this background, with the developed countries deeply involved in their own economic affairs, not much attention has been paid to the economies of the developing countries. My book Macroeconomics for Development: Prognosis and Prospects has been put together partly to address this paucity. Chapter 1 of the book places the macroeconomic challenges of economic development in context whereas Chapter 2 outlines widely accepted contours of economic development.  Chapter 3 explores the role of finance and institutions in economic development and Chapter 4 discusses the design of monetary policy.  Chapter 5 discusses the design of fiscal policy for economic development and Chapter 6 considers macroeconomic policy design in open economies.  Chapter 7 articulates two versions of the stochastic general equilibrium model of the macroeconomy – the Ramsey model and the overlapping generations model. Chapter 8 examines the consequences of the pandemic for the developing world and Chapter 9 considers how uncommon macroeconomic policy has been designed during the pandemic.  

The novelty of the book lies in presenting the received theory of macroeconomics for development as well as the particular challenges thrown up by the pandemic. As such, the book is likely to be of interest to students in undergraduate and graduate courses in macroeconomics of economic development as well as to other interested readers.   It is written in relatively non-technical language so that it can appeal to students, scholars and general readers alike.

Macroeconomics for Development by Raghbendra Jha, Emeritus Professor of Economics, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics, Australian National University, Australia is out now.

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Chris Bilton, Stephen Cummings and dt ogilvie consider the ‘what’, ‘how’, ‘where’, ‘who’ and ‘why’ of the creative process and how this translates in the movie world.

The Oscars ceremony this Sunday sees the Academy under fire again for a lack of diversity in nominations. No women directors nominated and no black nominees for best actor or best actress. Asian talent may enjoy a moment with Everything Everywhere All at Once, and we might get to see Angela Bassett, Ke Huy Hwang or Michelle Yeoh speaking out on the need for diversity in Hollywood. But, overall, not much is different at the top of the bill.

According to a recent report by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative increasing the representation of women and non-white nominees at the Oscars has been a slow process. In the 8 years since 2015’s #OscarsSoWhite protest, nominations from global majority racial ethnic groups increased by 8% compared to the previous 8 years. Women nominations were up from 21% to 27% in the same period (a step forward perhaps, but well short of parity).

There have been isolated successes – Moonlight’s best picture win in 2017, Chloe Zhao becoming the second ever woman to win a best director Oscar in 2021. And as in previous years, we can expect a more diverse set of nominations and winners if we scroll down to the less glamorous categories like ‘Best Song’. Sunday’s ceremony will no doubt attempt to compensate for a lack of diversity on screen with a diversity of presenters onstage.

It has been a similar story with other recent awards ceremonies – at the BAFTAs all 49 winners were white. The ‘Brits’ music awards’ attempt to be more inclusive by removing gender categories backfired, with an all-male shortlist in the ‘best artist’ category.

Awards ceremonies are a mess of contradictory aims – celebrating industry success, rewarding and recognising individual talent, unwittingly promoting role models or tropes. But above all they are about marketing. At a time when the film industry is fighting to remain viable and relevant for younger audiences, and still trying to win back audiences captured by streaming services during Covid-19, all white shortlists are a bad look. But there is another important element hidden in all this.

The Oscars remain important because they tell us about how the industry (still) sees itself, and what the movie industry thinks ‘creativity’ looks like. Regardless of colour and gender, creativity in Hollywood is presented as a story of glamourous individual talent and big business. Those who make the star turn possible might be thanked on the night, but the ‘craft’ awards won by teams are mostly skipped in the live broadcast. Awards ceremonies also leave out the wider industry ‘culture’ – the deal-makers who provide access, the writers, the influencers, the networkers. In our Creativities book we argue that focusing on one type of person or one type of ‘creative’ thinking misses out the complexity and multiplicity of the real creative process. There are many different ways to be creative – understanding the various ‘creativities’ we ourselves possess and can identify in the others we combine with will help us to make new creative connections.

In our book Creativities we consider the ‘what’, ‘how’, ‘where’, ‘who’ and ‘why’ of the creative process. In our ‘how’ chapter, we consider how leaders mix and enable (or not) other people’s creativities – Harvey Weinstein’s leadership being a case study of what happens when one entitled individual is allowed to dominate, exclude and marginalise other creativities. In our ‘who’ section, we consider how the circle of creativity can be expanded to include other voices – and describe the role of prominent industry figures like Oprah Winfrey and Shonda Rimes in opening doors for black talent in television.

However, the starting point for ‘creativities’ is the list of ingredients. This is the ‘what’ of creativity, and diversity and authenticity of ingredients is the basis for all the recipes which follow. Finding the right combination of ingredients is partly a matter of seeking them out from unexpected places, but also recognising what you already have. Most of the stories we tell here are about the overlooked or hidden creativities – the creativities of Lewis Latimer, the black innovator who turned Edison’s ‘invention’ of the lightbulb into a viable product, or ‘Peaches’ Bartkowicz, who pioneered the double-handed backhand in tennis because she and her supporters backed her to do it her own way. Neither of them received much recognition, but both transformed their respective fields.

That diversity is so important to creativity, and it is out there – just don’t expect to see much of it on display in the ‘winners’ lists on Sunday night. When it comes to inequality, the Oscars are a symptom of industry failure rather than a cause. Structural inequalities across the creative industries are nothing new, and an awards ceremony is not going to change them. The Oscars are the story the industry tells the world about itself. Most of the interesting parts in that story get swept under the red carpet or drowned out by the exit music. But away from the bright lights, other creative stories are being told, they just aren’t being heard. Look closely on Sunday and you might catch sight of the unsung groups, teams and connections behind the star performers, and the possibility for new creativities they are shaping rather than the individual past glories being held on too.

Creativities: The What, How, Where, Who and Why of the Creative Process is out now.

Chris Bilton, University of Warwick, UK, Stephen Cummings, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and dt ogilvie, Rochester Institute of Technology, US

Read Part One free on Elgaronline

Written by Dr Neil Thompson, independent writer, educator and adviser and a visiting professor at the Open University. His website, with his acclaimed Manifesto for Making a Difference, is at www.NeilThompson.info.

I have been involved in teaching social work for over 30 years. To begin with, the majority of students were mature students who generally had some direct experience in the social work world (as social work assistants, care workers or foster carers, for example). It could be assumed, then, that we did not need to teach them about what social work is.

Over the years, though, the student demographic has changed considerably. We now have a greater proportion of younger students, many of whom have little or no experience in the field. Much of the early teaching therefore needs to focus on the nature and purposes of social work in order to establish a common baseline of understanding. This is necessary because a significant proportion of the general public have little or no idea of what social work is or what social workers actually do.

In my experience, misconceptions are more common than a genuine understanding of what is involved in the day-to-day work of social work teams up and down the country. Media distortions play a big part in this, reinforcing stereotypes of child care social workers as child snatchers (rather than highly skilled professionals who work extremely hard to keep families together while protecting children and safeguarding their health, education and welfare). Removing a child is, of course, a last resort.
Social workers in other fields of practice are generally invisible, in the sense that, unless you are professionally involved or you have had direct experience of being on the receiving end of social work support, the chances are you will have little more than a vague inkling of what social work is all about.

This low level of understanding (or high level of misunderstanding) is also to be found among fellow professionals at times, and so social workers will often have to clarify and negotiate their role before they can get down to the actual business of their work (for example, convincing GPs who issue instructions rather than make interprofessional referrals that social workers are obliged to make their own holistic assessment based on engaging with the individual or family concerned). I once had an elderly woman give me a referral letter from her GP and tell me that it was a ‘prescription’ for a place in a care home. It turned out, following a social work assessment, that all that was needed was a light package of support services – she was nowhere near the criteria for admission to residential care.

Social work is highly complex and demanding (if a problem is simple or straightforward, it is unlikely that it would find its way to a busy social worker’s desk, as they are likely to be up to their eyes with more high-profile cases with higher levels of risk). It is often poorly understood – even by people who should know better; largely underfunded (consider the longstanding concerns about the NHS experiencing difficulties because of the shortage of much-needed social care provision); and currently subject to major recruitment and retention problems (austerity measures have increased demand while decreasing supply, making the job unmanageable much of the time). These challenges then, of course, make teaching social work very challenging too. Successfully preparing students for all that they will face in the ‘real world’ of social work is no mean feat.

But, despite all these pressures and challenges, social work remains a popular choice for students who recognize that the pressures are largely counterbalanced by the rewards of the job – making a positive difference to the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in some of our most disadvantaged communities and promoting social justice.

Given the complexities and dilemmas that are part and parcel of social work, effective teaching needs to be much more than conventional talk and chalk (or the death by PowerPoint equivalent). I have been fortunate in my teaching career to have worked alongside some very creative and inspiring teachers. So, when it came to writing my Teaching Social Work book, I was privileged to be able to draw on what I had learned from such gifted educators, while also adding many ideas of my own developed over many years.

Despite the tabloid media’s predilection for distorting social work and for highlighting and exaggerating the small minority of cases that go wrong, social work is a major force for good, helping to make our society a humane, caring and inclusive one. By its very nature it is challenging and demanding, and so effective and safe practice relies on high-quality educational experiences. There is no easy, formula way to ensure such experiences, but what Teaching Social Work offers is a foundation of ideas, exercises and approaches that can help students engage with the professional knowledge base that can guide them in all their endeavours.

Teaching Social Work
is available to purchase now.

Neil Thompson, Independent writer, educator and adviser and visiting professor at the Open University, UK

Read a sample chapter on Elgaronline.