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Файл:Английский для экономистов. Учебное пособие
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Productivity is a key 16)________ of how much the economy can grow
without generating too much inflation. When productivity is sluggish, it means
businesses are making less profit.
This usually translates into weaker 17)________ growth and lower living
standards.
«Disappointing productivity growth was a main factor behind what proved
to be overoptimism in growth forecasts for advanced economies in the period after
the crisis», the IMF said.
Growth in emerging markets is crucial
It isn't all doom and gloom. The IMF is pinning its hopes for stronger global
growth on emerging markets, which have struggled in recent years with the
collapse of the oil price and other 18)________.
As countries like China and India become bigger global growth engines,
stronger output in these economies will power the recovery forward.
This is expected to drive a third of the expected recovery in growth over the
coming years, while the end of recessions in emerging markets such as Argentina,
Brazil, Nigeria and Russia will also lift growth.
Advanced economies face several challenges in the coming years, the IMF
said.
Protectionism has become a global threat
With Donald Trump in the running to become the next US president, the
IMF spelled out the 19)________ of an increase in tit-for-tat trade barriers.
It said the higher cost of traded goods lowers global output by almost 1.75pc
after five years and by almost 2pc in the longer term.
Global consumption would fall by a similar amount, with global investment
falling by even more.
Global trade would take the biggest hit, with imports and 20)________
down by 15pc after five years and 16pc in the long run.
Demographic 21)________ is set to transform economies in the coming
decades.
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Population growth is slowing, while the working-age population (between
the ages of 15 and 64 years old) is projected to decline over the next five years.
The IMF said these trends would be as 22)________ to «old» advanced
economies such as the UK, Germany and Japan as «new» advanced economies
such as Slovenia and Korea, which are experiencing «a faster and sharper
demographic transition».
The IMF said the transition in China, currently the world's most populous
country, would be «particularly rapid» with population 23)________ expected to
decline to 0.25pc over the next five years, from 0.5pc in the previous decade.
China’s working-age 24)________ is projected to start shrinking over the
next five years.
An ageing world
The share of workers aged between 55 and 64 years old has 25)________
dramatically in advanced economies over the past two decades.
The IMF said this would «increase pressure on pension and health care
systems and worsen debt dynamics, especially as the workforce starts to shrink».
3. Read the following article and make a rendering of it in English.
На современном этапе развития цивилизации как никогда остро встали
вопросы, без решения которых невозможно дальнейшее поступательное
движение человечества по пути экономического прогресса. Несмотря на то,
что экономика является лишь частью общечеловеческой
деятельности, от ее
развития в XXI в. в большей мере зависят проблемы безопасности и
сохранения мира, природная среда и среда обитания человека, а также
моральные, религиозные и философские ценности.
Значение глобальных проблем особенно возросло во второй половине
ХХ в. Именно они существенно воздействуют на структуру национального и
мирового хозяйства. Исторически мировое
хозяйство как единое целое
сложилось к началу ХХ в. в результате втягивания в мирохозяйственные
152
связи большей части стран мира. К этому времени был закончен
территориальный раздел мира, в мировом хозяйстве сформировалось два
полюса. На одном полюсе находились промышленно развитые страны, а на
другом – их колонии – аграрно-сырьевые придатки. Последние были втянуты
в международное разделение труда задолго до становления там
национальных рынков. Вовлечение этих стран в
мировые хозяйственные
отношения фактически произошло не в связи с потребностями их
собственного развития, а явилось продуктом экспансии индустриально
развитых стран. Сформировавшееся таким образом мировое хозяйство, даже
после обретения независимости бывшими колониями, на долгие годы
сохранило отношения центра и периферии. Вот откуда берут начало
нынешние глобальные проблемы и противоречия.
Как правило,
для решения глобальных проблем требуются огромные
материальные и финансовые средства. Основными критериями отнесения
той или иной проблемы к категории глобальных признано считать ее
масштабность и необходимость совместных усилий для ее устранения.
Глобальные проблемы – несоответствия между наиболее значимыми
планетарными потребностями и возможностью их удовлетворения
совместными усилиями человечества в определенный период времени.
Глобальные
проблемы человечества – это проблемы, которые
затрагивают жизненные интересы всего населения планеты и требуют для
своего решения совместных усилий всех государств мира.
В современных условиях к глобальным проблемам относятся:
• проблема Север-Юг;
• проблема бедности;
• продовольственная проблема;
• энергетическая проблема;
• проблема экологии и устойчивого развития;
• демографическая проблема;
• проблема развития человеческого потенциала;
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• проблема обеспечения человеческой безопасности;
• проблема освоения Мирового океана.
Исключительные трудности и большие затраты для решения
глобальных проблем требуют их обоснованной классификации.
По своему происхождению, характеру и способам решения глобальные
проблемы, согласно принятой международными организациями
классификации, делятся на три группы. Первую группу составляют
проблемы, определяемые основными социально-экономическими и
политическими
задачами человечества. К ним относятся сохранение мира,
прекращение гонки вооружений и разоружение, немилитаризация космоса,
создание благоприятных условий для мирового социального прогресса,
преодоление отставания в развитии стран с низкими доходами на душу
населения.
Вторая группа охватывает комплекс проблем, раскрывающихся в
триаде «человек – общество – техника». Эти проблемы должны учитывать
эффективность использования НТП
в интересах гармоничного социального
развития и ликвидацию негативного влияния техники на человека, рост
народонаселения, утверждение прав человека в государстве, его
освобождение из-под чрезмерно усилившегося контроля государственных
институтов, особенно над личной свободой как важнейшей составляющей
прав человека.
Третья группа представлена проблемами, связанными с социально-
экономическими процессами и окружающей средой, т. е
. проблемы
отношений по линии общество – природа. Сюда входят решение сырьевой,
энергетической и продовольственной проблем, преодоление кризиса
окружающей среды, охватывающего все новые и новые районы и способного
разрушить жизнь человека.
Конец ХХ и начало XXI вв. привели к перерастанию ряда локальных,
специфических вопросов развития стран и регионов в разряд глобальных.
Однако следует
признать, что решающую роль в этом процессе сыграла
интернационализация.
154
Part 3
GLOBALISATION: THE RISE AND FALL
OF AN IDEA THAT SWEPT THE WORLD
The annual January gathering of the World Economic Forum in Davos is
usually a placid affair: a place for well-heeled participants to exchange notes on
global business opportunities, or powder conditions on the local ski slopes, while
cradling champagne and canapes. This January, the ultra-rich and the sparkling
wine returned, but by all reports the mood was one of anxiety, defensiveness and
self-reproach.
The future of economic globalisation, for which the Davos men and women
see themselves as caretakers, had been shaken by a series of political earthquakes.
«Globalisation» can mean many things, but what lay in particular doubt was the
long-advanced project of increasing free trade in goods across borders. The
previous summer, Britain had voted to leave the largest trading bloc in the world.
In November, the unexpected victory of Donald Trump, who vowed to withdraw
from major trade deals, appeared to jeopardise the trading relationships of the
world’s richest country. Forthcoming elections in France and Germany suddenly
seemed to bear the possibility of anti-globalisation parties garnering better results
than ever before. The barbarians weren’t at the gates to the ski-lifts yet – but they
weren’t very far.
In a panel titled Governing Globalisation, the economist Dambisa Moyo,
otherwise a well-known supporter of free trade, forthrightly asked the audience to
accept that «there have been significant losses» from globalisation. «It is not clear
to me that we are going to be able to remedy them under the current
infrastructure», she added. Christine Lagarde, the head of the International
Monetary Fund, called for a policy hitherto foreign to the World Economic Forum:
«more redistribution». After years of hedging or discounting the malign effects of
free trade, it was time to face facts: globalisation caused job losses and depressed
wages, and the usual Davos proposals – such as instructing affected populations to
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accept the new reality – weren’t going to work. Unless something changed, the
political consequences were likely to get worse.
The backlash to globalisation has helped fuel the extraordinary political
shifts of the past 18 months. During the close race to become the Democratic party
candidate, senator Bernie Sanders relentlessly attacked Hillary Clinton on her
support for free trade. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump openly proposed
tilting the terms of trade in favour of American industry. «Americanism, not
globalism, shall be our creed», he bellowed at the Republican national convention
last July. The vote for Brexit was strongest in the regions of the UK devastated by
the flight of manufacturing. At Davos in January, British prime minister Theresa
May, the leader of the party of capital and inherited wealth, improbably picked up
the theme, warning that, for many, «talk of greater globalisation … means their
jobs being outsourced and wages undercut». Meanwhile, the European far right has
been warning against free movement of people as well as goods. Following her
qualifying victory in the first round of France’s presidential election, Marine Le
Pen warned darkly that «the main thing at stake in this election is the rampant
globalisation that is endangering our civilisation».
It was only a few decades ago that globalisation was held by many, even by
some critics, to be an inevitable, unstoppable force. «Rejecting globalisation», the
American journalist George Packer has written, «was like rejecting the sunrise».
Globalisation could take place in services, capital and ideas, making it a
notoriously imprecise term; but what it meant most often was making it cheaper to
trade across borders – something that seemed to many at the time to be an
unquestionable good. In practice, this often meant that industry would move from
rich countries, where labour was expensive, to poor countries, where labour was
cheaper. People in the rich countries would either have to accept lower wages to
compete, or lose their jobs. But no matter what, the goods they formerly produced
would now be imported, and be even cheaper. And the unemployed could get new,
higher-skilled jobs (if they got the requisite training). Mainstream economists and
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politicians upheld the consensus about the merits of globalisation, with little
concern that there might be political consequences.
Back then, economists could calmly chalk up anti-globalisation sentiment to
a marginal group of delusional protesters, or disgruntled stragglers still toiling
uselessly in «sunset industries». These days, as sizable constituencies have voted in
country after country for anti-free-trade policies, or candidates that promise to limit
them, the old self-assurance is gone. Millions have rejected, with uncertain results,
the punishing logic that globalisation could not be stopped. The backlash has
swelled a wave of soul-searching among economists, one that had already begun to
roll ashore with the financial crisis. How did they fail to foresee the repercussions?
In the heyday of the globalisation consensus, few economists questioned its
merits in public. But in 1997, the Harvard economist Dani Rodrik published a slim
book that created a stir. Appearing just as the US was about to enter a historic
economic boom, Rodrik’s book, Has Globalization Gone Too Far?, sounded an
unusual note of alarm.
Rodrik pointed to a series of dramatic recent events that challenged the idea
that growing free trade would be peacefully accepted. In 1995, France had adopted
a programme of fiscal austerity in order to prepare for entry into the eurozone;
trade unions responded with the largest wave of strikes since 1968. In 1996, only
five years after the end of the Soviet Union – with Russia’s once-protected markets
having been forcibly opened, leading to a sudden decline in living standards – a
communist won 40% of the vote in Russia’s presidential elections. That same year,
two years after the passing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta),
one of the most ambitious multinational deals ever accomplished, a white
nationalist running on an «America first» programme of economic protectionism
did surprisingly well in the presidential primaries of the Republican party.
What was the pathology of which all of these disturbing events were
symptoms? For Rodrik, it was «the process that has come to be called
«globalisation». Since the 1980s, and especially following the collapse of the
Soviet Union, lowering barriers to international trade had become the axiom of
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countries everywhere. Tariffs had to be slashed and regulations spiked. Trade
unions, which kept wages high and made it harder to fire people, had to be
crushed. Governments vied with each other to make their country more hospitable
– more «competitive» – for businesses. That meant making labour cheaper and
regulations looser, often in countries that had once tried their hand at socialism, or
had spent years protecting «homegrown» industries with tariffs.
These moves were generally applauded by economists. After all, their
profession had long embraced the principle of comparative advantage – simply put,
the idea countries will trade with each other in order to gain what each lacks,
thereby benefiting both. In theory, then, the globalisation of trade in goods and
services would benefit consumers in rich countries by giving them access to
inexpensive goods produced by cheaper labour in poorer countries, and this
demand, in turn, would help grow the economies of those poorer countries.
But the social cost, in Rodrik’s dissenting view, was high – and consistently
underestimated by economists. He noted that since the 1970s, lower-skilled
European and American workers had endured a major fall in the real value of their
wages, which dropped by more than 20%. Workers were suffering more spells of
unemployment, more volatility in the hours they were expected to work.
While many economists attributed much of the insecurity to technological
change – sophisticated new machines displacing low-skilled workers – Rodrik
suggested that the process of globalisation should shoulder more of the blame. It
was, in particular, the competition between workers in developing and developed
countries that helped drive down wages and job security for workers in developed
countries. Over and over, they would be held hostage to the possibility that their
business would up and leave, in order to find cheap labour in other parts of the
world; they had to accept restraints on their salaries – or else. Opinion polls
registered their strong levels of anxiety and insecurity, and the political effects
were becoming more visible. Rodrik foresaw that the cost of greater «economic
integration» would be greater «social disintegration». The inevitable result would
be a huge political backlash.
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As Rodrik would later recall, other economists tended to dismiss his
arguments – or fear them. Paul Krugman, who would win the Nobel prize in 2008
for his earlier work in trade theory and economic geography, privately warned
Rodrik that his work would give «ammunition to the barbarians».
It was a tacit acknowledgment that pro-globalisation economists, journalists
and politicians had come under growing pressure from a new movement on the
left, who were raising concerns very similar to Rodrik’s. Over the course of the
1990s, an unwieldy international coalition had begun to contest the notion that
globalisation was good. Called «anti-globalisation» by the media, and the «alter-
globalisation» or «global justice» movement by its participants, it tried to draw
attention to the devastating effect that free trade policies were having, especially in
the developing world, where globalisation was supposed to be having its most
beneficial effect. This was a time when figures such as the New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman had given the topic a glitzy prominence by
documenting his time among what he gratingly called «globalutionaries»: chatting
amiably with the CEO of Monsanto one day, gawking at lingerie manufacturers in
Sri Lanka the next. Activists were intent on showing a much darker picture,
revealing how the record of globalisation consisted mostly of farmers pushed off
their land and the rampant proliferation of sweatshops. They also implicated the
highest world bodies in their critique: the G7, World Bank and IMF. In 1999, the
movement reached a high point when a unique coalition of trade unions and
environmentalists managed to shut down the meeting of the World Trade
Organization in Seattle.
In a state of panic, economists responded with a flood of columns and books
that defended the necessity of a more open global market economy, in tones
ranging from grandiose to sarcastic. In January 2000, Krugman used his first piece
as a New York Times columnist to denounce the «trashing» of the WTO, calling it
«a sad irony that the cause that has finally awakened the long-dormant American
left is that of – yes! – denying opportunity to third-world workers».
159
Where Krugman was derisive, others were solemn, putting the contemporary
fight against the «anti-globalisation» left in a continuum of struggles for liberty.
«Liberals, social democrats and moderate conservatives are on the same side in the
great battles against religious fanatics, obscurantists, extreme environmentalists,
fascists, Marxists and, of course, contemporary anti-globalisers», wrote the
Financial Times columnist and former World Bank economist Martin Wolf in his
book Why Globalization Works. Language like this lent the fight for globalisation
the air of an epochal struggle. More common was the rhetoric of figures such as
Friedman, who in his book The World is Flat mocked the «pampered American
college kids» who, «wearing their branded clothing, began to get interested in
sweatshops as a way of expiating their guilt».
Arguments against the global justice movement rested on the idea that the
ultimate benefits of a more open and integrated economy would outweigh the
downsides. «Freer trade is associated with higher growth and … higher growth is
associated with reduced poverty», wrote the Columbia University economist
Jagdish Bhagwati in his book In Defense of Globalization. «Hence, growth reduces
poverty». No matter how troubling some of the local effects, the implication went,
globalisation promised a greater good.
The fact that proponents of globalisation now felt compelled to spend much
of their time defending it indicates how much visibility the global justice
movement had achieved by the early 2000s. Still, over time, the movement lost
ground, as a policy consensus settled in favour of globalisation. The proponents of
globalisation were determined never to let another gathering be interrupted. They
stopped meeting in major cities, and security everywhere was tightened. By the
time of the invasion of Iraq, the world’s attention had turned from free trade to
George Bush and the «war on terror», leaving the globalisation consensus intact.
Above all, there was a widespread perception that globalisation was working
as it was supposed to. The local adverse effects that activists pointed to –
sweatshop labour, starving farmers – were increasingly obscured by the staggering
GDP numbers and fantastical images of gleaming skylines coming out of China.
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