Marco Mari

Ethiopia's coffee industry, which accounts for 30% of the country's exports, is a key driver of its economy. This paper aims to explore whether global trends affecting this industry could potentially bring about positive effects for its social and economic development. Specifically, our research will assess whether and how the so-called 'third wave of coffee' - characterized by an emphasis on fair trade, sustainable agricultural practices, and premium prices granted to coffee growers - can contribute to a broader advancement of Ethiopia's market integration and institutions (see Rodrik and Subramanian, Acemoglu and Robinson).

This case analysis critically examines the successes and pitfalls of Amazon's ventures into emerging markets of China, Brazil, and India from 2004 to 2014. The exploration is anchored in the frameworks of Khanna and Palepu (2010) and Prashantham and Yip (2017), considering the company's entry timing, barriers encountered, competitive advantages, collaboration strategies, and adaptability to local conditions. The analysis elucidates the divergent outcomes based on varied market strategies and reveals that Amazon's quintessential customer-centricity, while advantageous, was insufficient in navigating unique institutional and infrastructural challenges of these markets.

Amazon's contrasting strategies—early acquisition of Joyo.com in China, cautious entries in India and Brazil—exposed its capacity to leverage global expertise. Yet, it also revealed a deficiency in understanding and addressing the nuanced intricacies of local markets, leading to a weaker performance against established local players like Alibaba, Flipkart, and MercadoLibre. Furthermore, the essay critiques Amazon's inability to effectively collaborate with local entities and suggests a more assertive, localized approach, such as forming joint ventures or investing in local startups.

The analysis concludes with strategic recommendations for Amazon's future engagements in emerging markets, emphasizing the importance of leveraging its formidable financial capacity and technological prowess. It proposes the transition from Amazon's traditional customer-centricity to a novel concept of market-centricity, involving the acknowledgement of all intermediaries, not just end users, when entering new markets. By presenting itself as a significant investment partner rather than an operational competitor to national champions, Amazon could better navigate institutional voids, maximize growth potential, and achieve global scaling through synergies and grand strategies.

This study investigates the relationship between democracy and economic development within the context of modernization theory. Employing the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Democracy Index and GDP per capita data from 159 countries in 2019, the analysis unveils a moderately strong positive correlation between the two variables, reinforcing the argument for a link between democratic governance and economic prosperity. A linear regression model further elaborates this relationship, predicting an increase in GDP per capita for each additional point on the EIU Democracy Index. However, this model explains only 28% of the variance in GDP per capita, implying that a substantial part of economic development is influenced by factors beyond the scope of this study. While the research's limitations include the use of single-year, cross-sectional data and the omission of potential confounding variables, it nonetheless offers significant insights into the interplay between democracy and economic development. The findings underscore the potential role of democratic processes in shaping economic outcomes and suggest a need for future research to incorporate a more comprehensive array of variables to fully understand this complex relationship.

This paper is about the consequences of global crises on nation-states and, in particular, on how the globalization downturns of 2008 and 2020 have produced an impact on the Italian democracy. Since both crises led to the collapse of the incumbent Italian governments and the appointment of technocratic prime ministers (Monti, 2011 and Draghi, 2021), the research will ground on the historical account of the selected period (2008-2022) a comparative analysis between the different leadership styles and political strategies of these two governments and the application of theories and cause-effect relationships that have been studied by prominent international scholars in the field of globalization, democracy and its mild degenerations such as populism and technocracy. An additional consideration will be given to the role of the center-right parties and their conservative coalition, whose decline started with Silvio Berlusconi’s resignation at the beginning of the analyzed period and ended with Giorgia Meloni’s victory in the 2022 general elections. As the paper will point out, Italy represents a comprehensive case of all these theoretical connections and an interesting playground for political scientists that are interested in studying the future of democracy in the globalized world.