Production Relations and Globalisation — DU B.A. (Hons.) Economics Previous Year Question Papers

1. Discuss the central features of the Fordist industrial organisation. Explain the ‘fit’ between mass production and mass consumption in the Fordist regimes along with the underlying institutional features that enabled this. 2. (a) Explain why the MNCs chose a path of capital deepening and continuous innovation and how their internal structure was conducive to this strategy. (b) What are the limitations of the transaction costs approach in explaining cross-border industrial organisation prevalent in the case of global value chains? 3. Discuss the view that the typical “global factory” in Asia gives a particular informal nature to capitalist labour. What are the different routes through which labour gets informalised? 4. How has financialisation transformed corporate governance structures? Discuss the shift from ‘managerial capitalism’ to investor capitalism’ and its consequences. What does Rakesh Khurana mean by the statement that managers have now become hired hands? 5. In what ways are neoconservative ideology and practices similar to and different from those of neoliberalism? Discuss how tendencies of neoconservatism arise from the instabilities and contradictions of the neoliberal state. 6. Using the evidence from any two countries, analyse, how the adoption of neoliberal practices has depended on a complex interplay of internal dynamics and external forces. Do you think that the balance of class forces plays an important role for any country taking the neoliberal turn? 7. With movement of global capital and relocation of work, feminization of work became prominent, along with rise in informalisation and insecurities.