Tomás Marques

Findings from an alternative democracy study, carried out by the Alliance of Democracies Foundation (a Danish-based NGO), stand in stark contrast to The Economist's Democracy Index. The study finds that perceptions of democracy in China — a country labelled undemocratic by The Economist — are higher than in many Western countries. This should make you think twice about how reliably The Economist measures democracy.

Yesterday, the USTR criticised the Brazilian payment system, known as PIX. @filipeamendonca and I wrote a policy paper that delves deeper into Trump's threats, exploring Brazil's asymmetric interdependence and its limited autonomy. In @GIGA_Institute giga-hamburg.de/en/publication…

@rich_rdctd @IsabellaMWeber @GregorSemieniuk @LSEEI @rich_rdctd what is the source of this image?

@IsabellaMWeber @GregorSemieniuk @LSEEI

Who stands to loose from a green transition? The biggest beneficiaries of fossil fuel profits, the richest of the rich. 50% of profits go to top 1% of wealth owners. My co-author @GregorSemieniuk will present our paper and more at the @LSEEI on March 3, 6.30 PM. Go if you can!

I’m excited to share our collaborative article “Reimagining Global Governance: ...” published in published in Global Studies Quarterly, January 2026,. doi.org/10.1093/isagsq… Special thanks to all co-authors Dr. Julia Gurol-Haller, @arielmhernandez and Miriam Prys

BREAKING NEWS: The U.S. will withdraw from 66 organizations, isolating the country from the wider world, the White House announced today.

Peru’s middle class is shrinking despite years of consistent economic growth. Their free-market model is designed to enrich a few + ensure that none of it ever trickles down. Now their biggest problem is urban poverty causing a massive wave of violent crime this past year.

From 1947 to 1979, wages and productivity rose in tandem, driving broad-based prosperity. After 1980, productivity kept climbing while wages and compensation stalled. This disconnect defines the Great Regression, a period in which workers produce more but receive far less in return.

When we look at the Brazilian economy and wonder why growth has been so low for so long, an uncomfortable part of the answer lies in the private sect itself. Brazil is a notorious breeding ground for zombie companies. These are firms that cannot generate enough profit even to pay the interest on their own debt, but remain in existence because the financial system allows for the constant rollover of this liability. They do not innovate, they do not grow, they do not increase productivity. According to an article by Granzotto et al. (2025) in the Brazilian Review of Finance, which compares companies in various emerging markets, on average 7.6% of firms are "static zombies" (firms with EBITDA/Financial Expenses < 1) and 5.5% are "dynamic zombies" (EBITDA/Financial Expenses >/= 1) in these markets. In the Brazilian case, 16.75% of companies are classified as static zombies and 13.94% as dynamic zombies! In other words, more than double the average for emerging markets. The authors themselves bluntly state that Brazil is the "heart of the zombie economy" among emerging markets, about 2.3 times above the international standard. To clarify what this means: we are talking about companies that cannot generate enough profit to cover their financial costs, meaning that investors will have to wait longer to recover their principal, and that workers will be employed in firms without the capacity to invest in new technologies and processes that could improve their human capital and productivity. The article shows that this mass of zombie companies distorts capital allocation, reduces aggregate productivity, and weakens investment dynamics. Credit, labor, and resources are trapped in financially fragile firms, while more productive companies face a hostile financing environment. And this, of course, has a cost in terms of potential economic growth. As long as the Brazilian government does not address the problem of reforming the business environment and its capital markets, these types of inefficiencies will continue to persist and condemn workers and investors to remain trapped in firms that should be defunct. SOURCE: periodicos.fgv.br/rbfin/article/… #Economía #econtwitter #Economics #Finance #Brazil

Remarkable (and consistent across time and countries) decrease in inequality in Latin America (after-tax income per capita); @lisdata Brazil from 62 in 1991 to 48 now (-14 Gini points) Mexico from 55 in 1992 to 44 now (-11 Gini points) Peru from 55 in 2005 to 44 now (-11 Gini points).

New from @dev_a_patel @arvindsubraman & me: "We were wrong about convergence." A few years back, we wrote a paper pointing out that Solow convergence had finally arrived. The developing world was catching up. Alas, it seems all good things come to an end. 1/

After discussing different questions with the editor, the article was published with some of my quotes. Unfortunately, the most important one didn't make the cut. To understand dependency, we need to look beyond trade and consider FDI and ownership in GVC tinyurl.com/2v8a5ak5

For those like @FT who skipped geography classes, it is important to remember that America is a continent rather than a country. However, the EU will not decouple from the US because it lacks the political and military autonomy to do so.

The world needs a plan for decoupling from the US (sorry @FT, America is a continent, not a country). However, this will never happen due to political and military forces, rather than economic reasons.

⛏️ Where are the world's rare earth minerals?

It is a misunderstanding to view the world economy superficially. It is essential to dive into the ownership of the supply chain and the capital flows to understand who benefits most from it. At the end of the day, China remains a capital exporter (in the form of profits)

The Economist continues to act as a cheerleader for Western imperialism. In familiar fashion, its recent issue portrays China’s growing dominance in international trade as alarming — this time for Europe. China’s rise does create real challenges for Europe — for example, Germany is right to think strategically about protecting its industrial base — but the problem is that the narrative is almost always framed in a one-sided way. The Economist never considered it a problem when China was subordinated within supply chains dominated by American and European firms. Why? Because Western economic hegemony is treated as the status quo and as “global common sense” by the magazine. We need to challenge these double standards that so often appear in Western media. We should not accept a discourse that treats China’s rise as alarming while presenting Western dominance as the natural order of things.

This is the idea that I've been advocating for over the past year in my work. China is neither a threat nor an enemy. We should learn from their experience. This is what the French Renault company is doing. That's what China did back then with Western MNCs.

Germany's exports to China have declined strongly. via @NicMicMacro

Unfortunately, I don't think this scenario will change within the next year. Multinational corporations are powerful players in the world economy, so it's unlikely that the Brazilian government will be able to introduce the kind of regulation seen in other developed countries.

The minimum wage in Mexico has more than doubled over the last 6 years — *without* leading to job losses or inflation. It's clearly a myth that good labour standards have to come at the expense of job creation or macroeconomic stability.