"Unequal development in the global capitalist economy: knowledge, monopoly, and monopsony" a talk by Dr. Dev Nathan, economist, Visiting Scholar at The New School for Social Research, New York

This paper seeks to explain the nature and basis of unequal development in the contemporary global capitalist economy. It characterizes the current structure of the world economy as a combination of knowledge monopolies which also become monopsonies, largely located in the headquarters economies of the global North, with producer companies largely based on commoditized knowledge in the supplier economies of the global South. This division of the knowledge economy and related profits affects accumulation and development in both parts of the global economy. Supplier economies can relatively easily acquire the commoditized knowledge of production and, thus, advance to middle-income status. The movement from middle to high-income status, however, requires accomplishing the much more difficult transformation of becoming a creator of knowledge that can be monopolized. Success in this transformation of the economy, however, also leads to struggles over the geo-strategic reorganization of the world economy.

Bio:

Dr. Dev NathanDev Nathan, an economist, is Visiting Scholar at The New School for Social Research, New York; Visiting Professor at the Institute for Human Development, New Delhi; and Research Director at the GenDev Centre for Research and Innovation His main research interests are global production, development issues of indigenous peoples and gender relations. He is co-editor of the Cambridge University Press series on Global Value Chains. His recent co-authored books include Reverse Subsidies in Global Monopsony Capitalism, 2022; and Witch Hunts: Culture, Patriarchy, and Structural Transformation, 2020. He is currently working on how the organization of the knowledge economy interacts with inequality in the global economy and between genders.

Registration link: https://flameuniversity.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_iBjeXUP9QFarSEPT8P1SXQ