Resources

And Science and Technology

Commodity Crops

•Price volatility and price stabilization

•Coffee:

-What should a coffee bean cost?

-‘Fair Trade’ coffee

-The tendency to oversupply

-The World Bank and coffee in Vietnam

•Why cartels don’t work

Resource Cartels

•Petroleum

-Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)

•Uranium

-The International Uranium Cartel

•Diamonds

-DeBeers

-A privately managed cartel

Making Cartels Work

•Nonsubstitutability

•Fixed locations

•Not getting too greedy

•Hegemonic power

The Rentier Phenomenon

•Resource poverty and economic development

•Resource wealth and political dysfunction

•Royalties, fiscal structure, and corruption

•The rise and fall of the Saudi standard of living

Resources and Foreign Policy

•When do governments use the means of foreign policy to affect foreign resources?

-To fill national needs

-To support nationally-based corporations

•Policies used:

-Political pressure

-Political support

-Covert operations

-Military intervention

Science and Technology

•The technology life cycle

•Science policy

•Intellectual property rights

-Three perspectives