Last updated on March 30, 2011
In a post over at Global Dashboard, New York University’s Center for International Cooperation‘s Alex Evans discussed the eight questions about development policy over the next decade that he answered in a new report for ActionAid.
Here are my answers. Like I often tell my students, I have no special insight when it comes to predicting the future, and just about anyone can come up with similar, if not better, predictions by reading The Economist and other solid sources of information for about a year.
Disclaimer: I am not responsible for anyone making important decisions on the basis of my answers below. This is all just in good fun.
1. What is the global balance of power in 2020?
We will have returned to a bipolar world by then, with the United States and its allies on one side and China and its potential allies on the other. I don’t believe the European Union (EU) will be a pole of its own. No matter how much they dislike saying so publicly, EU leaders hold by and large the same values as those of the US administration, so it is unlikely that they would align with China on the big, important issues.
2. Will job creation keep pace with demographic change to 2020?
Yes. It always has throughout history, and it’s not going to change over the next ten years. Much like I don’t buy into Malthusian scenarios, I don’t buy into end-of-work type scenarios.
If anything, the US and the EU will likely have to open themselves up even more to immigration so as to have a tax base that is broad enough to support the elderly when the baby boom generation retires. I expect American and European citizens to have a mind that is increasingly open to immigration as they see the fiscal necessity of having more young people paying taxes.
3. Is there serious global monetary reform by 2020?
Yes, if by reform one means the end of the euro zone. I wouldn’t be surprised for the EU to go back to national currencies given the heterogeneity of its constituent economies. What I mean by this is that there is not enough cultural unity or labor mobility in Europe to justify a country (e.g., Germany or France) sacrificing some aspect of its economic well-being to prop up another country’s (e.g., Greece or Italy) economy. Paul Krugman had an excellent article on the topic in the New York Times Magazine a few months ago.
4. Who will benefit from the projected ‘avalanche of technology’ by 2020?
Everyone. Even if someone does not directly benefit from technology, the entire world benefits indirectly from technological innovation because of spillovers. Some innovation may be used only in one industry in one area of the world — think of the Internet in the mid-1990s, which was almost exclusively used in the US — but the productivity gains cause by that innovation spill over to other industries and to other areas of the world. In the long run, almost everyone can catch up — think of the spread of mobile phones and Internet cafés across Africa.
5. Will the world face up to the equity questions that come with a world of limits by 2020?
Much as I don’t believe that demographic change will outpace job creation, I don’t believe we will hit limits by 2020. Once again, I strongly believe in technological innovation. Necessity is the mother of invention. In any event, we already have the technology to feed the world cheaply under the form of genetically modified (GM) crops. It’s up to the world to wake up to the fact that we have that technology. I am afraid that it will take famines and food riots before developing-country governments are ready to accept GM crops, but they will eventually be accepted.
Robert Paarlberg has a very good book titled Starved for Science on this topic, in which he explains how biotechnology is being kept out of Africa. Of course, I am not saying we should blindly adopt GM crops. We should only adopt them after they are rigorously tested. But make no mistake, the “cheaper food” option is already on the table.
6. Is global trade in decline by 2020?
No. I expect the volume of global trade to either remain at its current level or to increase. I just can’t see protectionism making a comeback with the international institutions that are in place.
7. How has the nature of political influence changed by 2020?
I expect both terrorist groups and multinationals to play a more important role in ten years. My view on this is anchored on two events. The first is 9/11, of course, which occurred a mere two weeks after I moved to the US for graduate school and which has really set the tone for all of my life in the US. The second is the coup d’état that took place in 2009 in Madagascar, where I have done quite a bit of fieldwork, as a consequence of Daewoo buying up a huge tract of land to grow food for Korean consumers.
8. What will the major global shocks be between now and 2020?
I don’t think one can make predictions about events that, by nature, lie in the tails of the distribution without looking foolish, so I’ll happily pass on this one.
I am sure many of you will disagree with these answers, so I would I love to hear readers’ thoughts on these questions.