"In these situations, refugees are allowed, and even encouraged, to move across the entire host country and even within regional blocs. This freedom strengthens their match with the needs of the destination societies because they can access more opportunities. It also lessens pressures on host communities because refugees are more evenly spread across the entire population."

https://apnews.com/article/migrants-new-york-adams-abbott-colombia-58d423ab3e84e5692d50f773803254ee#:~:text=By%20Abbott's%20count%2C%20Texas%20has,social%20service%20organizations%20or%20municipalities.

Interestingly, the given report supports the decisions made by Texan governor Greg Abbott to send busloads of immigrants to NYC. While the sheer number immigrants defeats the purpose of distributing migrants across the country, it does accomplish its purpose of mitigating some of the pressure present on border cities/states.

Some could argue that the extreme measures Abbott has taken are a function of poor federal oversight in distributing migrants across the U.S. and instead letting them accumulate in border cities, draining resources.

How do free trade agreements and migration influence development?

"High-skilled emigration from low-income countries—the so-called brain drain—can inflict losses and create development challenges."

Globalization has had a significant detrimental effect to low-income countries. By greatly improving the ease of which people can migrate, it leads to brain drain where highly-skilled workers leave low-income countries to earn higher wages. By losing such highly-skilled workers, the development of these low-income countries is significantly punished. This creates a vicious cycle where low-income countries are unable to develop which then leads more highly-skilled workers to leave in search for greater opportunities.

"Severing SWIFT access first, without imposing maximal banking sanctions, would perversely increase demand for SWIFT alternatives, including Russia’s own interbank communications network"

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60521822

This claim is supported by the following article which has noted that previous threats to block Russia from the SWIFT system have led them to develop their own systems as fail-safes, therefore complicating the strength of the threat.

How do free international financial markets affect economies?

"Tough sanctions on oil and gas sales, by far Russia’s most valuable exports, will be politically difficult because markets are tight and the Biden administration worries about the impact on domestic gasoline prices and inflation"

The passage illustrates how free, international markets present complexities in executing sanctions as such market structure means that the price of commodities such as oil is necessarily uniform since it can be easily traded between borders. This causes problems when many economies depend heavily on the same industry (e.g oil) that thus makes it economically-infeasible for countries to place sanctions on that area.

https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.jclepro.2023.137173

Interestingly, a study conducted found that COVID would actually lessen expected decline of globalization. Their reasoning was that COVID also created circumstances where countries that would normally not trade (e.g China and Europe) would decide to do so to get ahold of essential supplies. Perhaps the damage to supply chains in fact led to important collaborative partnerships made by countries without strong bilateral relations.

What is the relationship between trade and development?

While globalization can be beneficial in terms of how countries can produce the good that they have a comparative advantage in and then trade, encouraging greater production and therefore economic development, the article mentions a very prescient concern about the influence of uncertainty over interdependence. Arguably, the benefits that trade brings could be a double-edged sword, impeding countries' economic progress during times of need (such as COVID) where countries can no longer be relied upon to supply their essential goods.

As Covid progressed, countries invested in many more core industries to become self-reliant and prevent similar events from happening again. After Covid ended, these industries didn't end but also did not grow. Rather, the governments tried to keep them alive as a fail-safe, but still rely on other countries through globalization for goods in which these other countries have a comparative advantage in.

The article stated that “if there were a temporary respite granted because of an economic downturn, emitters would rush to exploit the gap, just as businesses would concentrate their activities if Congress granted a one-year income tax amnesty”. I’m not sure how much I agree with this because, nowadays, there is significant public pressure on companies to be environmentally-friendly that arguably supersedes the economic pressure placed by taxes. This is supported by a study conducted by Lestari et al. which found that “customer pressure has a significant positive effect on green innovation performance”.

Link: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/733/1/012048

Responding to the inquiry question: How does economic growth affect the environment?, the article that economic growth significantly hurts the environment by saying that “when firms or individuals embark on activities that contribute to greater atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, they do not take into account the potentially large harms that their actions impose on others”. This means that economic growth hurts the environment because companies do not factor in the potential detrimental impact within their decision-making process. I disagree. I believe that companies take the factor into account, but in a profit-maximizing fashion, will choose to take the action if the potential profit exceeds the potential cost to them for hurting the environment.

"As early as the late eighteenth century, the great French political philosopher Montesquieu noted the geographic concentration of prosperity and poverty, and proposed an explanation for it. He argued that people in tropical climates tended to be lazy and to lack inquisitiveness." I disagree. In Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, he noted that agriculture in tropical climates was a year-round venture, while agriculture in Western climates paused in the winter, estimating that Asian rice farmers work roughly 3,000 hours per year compared to 1,200 hours in Western countries. Given the fact that these Asian countries are still much more economically-underdeveloped, it is clear that culture therefore does not play a significant role in determining whether a country will experience significant economic growth.

"The policies were chosen because they were good politics, enabling Busia to transfer resources to politically powerful groups, for example in urban areas, who needed to be kept contented". This lets me somewhat answer the question of What are the sources of economic development? in that whether institutional norms encourage economic growth are far more deterministic of such growth compared to geography, cultural, and ignorance. In particular, the norms that wreak the most havoc seem to be ones that feed the notion of being able to buy political support because it most directly meets the primary goal of every politician: to be re-elected and remain with the same influence & power as before.

"fully selfish behavior is the exception, not the rule"

The report claims that humans sometimes act altruistically, citing this 'dictator game' as evidence. I disagree. I believe that humans always act selfishly, but there are many cases in which the benefits in helping others outweigh the benefits in helping oneself. In the example of the dictator, it might be to conform to the social norm of 'not being selfish' to remain in other people's good graces, which is in of itself a selfish act. I believe the report defines the concept of being selfish too narrowly and does not recognize the effect retaining personal advantages from sharing may have on these decisions.

"Poverty, time pressure, and financial stress all can cause cognitive strain"

This cognitive strain, caused by financial stress, could lead the farmers to make irrational decisions, hindering themselves in the long-run. I have read before that some stress can actually aid decision-making by increasing your focus; therefore, I wonder what possible policy the government can implement that alleviates the cognitive strain without decreasing this 'good stress'.

"Changing mentals models through media"

While this section noted the ways mental models in the media could be used to achieve the objectives of the government, this makes me wonder what mental models the private media today might be perpetuating to fulfill their self-interested economic incentives.