Blockchain Papers

Martin Altemeyer-Bartscher, Dirk Rübbelke, Eytan Sheshinski

No abstract is available for this record.

Fredérić Docquier, Oliver Paddison, Pierre Pestieau

No abstract is available for this record.

Rocco Macchiavello

No abstract is available for this record.

Clemens Fuest, Martin Kolmar

No abstract is available for this record.

Roman Inderst, Holger M. Müller

Abstract We study optimal financial contracting for centralized and decentralized firms. Under centralized contracting, headquarters raises funds on behalf of multiple projects. Under decentralized contracting, each project raises funds separately on the external capital market. The benefit of centralization is that headquarters can use excess liquidity from high cash‐flow projects to buy continuation rights for low cash‐flow projects. The cost is that headquarters may pool cash flows from several projects and self‐finance follow‐up investments without having to return to the capital market. Absent any capital market discipline, it is more difficult to force headquarters to make repayments, which tightens financing constraints ex ante. Cross‐sectionally, our model implies that conglomerates should have a lower average productivity than stand‐alone firms.

Torsten Eymann, Stefan Sackmann, Günter Müller, Ingo Pippow

The mobile and increasingly ubiquitous use of information technology leads to more dynamic, constantly self-reconfiguring networks. Their services are available anytime and anywhere; as software agents, they can make local, context-aware decisions. F. A. von Hayek developed a theory for economic coordination based on individual decision making. This paper presents the explanation concepts of economic self-organization as at least one option for the design of decentralized coordination of information systems consisting of autonomous software agents with limited information processing capacity and incomplete information. Experiments using a multi-agent system show that a targeted change of this basic rule set directly influences the behavior of the individual elements and indirectly the behavior of the overall system.

Aleksander Berentsen, Guillaume Rocheteau

No abstract is available for this record.

Roman Inderst, Holger M. Müller

This paper compares optimal financial contracts with centralized and decentralized\nfirms. Under centralized contracting headquarters raises funds on behalf of multiple projects and then allocates the funds on the firm’s internal capital market. Under decentralized contracting each project raises funds separately on the external capital market. The benefit of centralization is that headquarters can use excess liquidity from high-cash flow projects to buy continuation rights for low cash-flow projects. This allows headquarters to make greater repayments to investors, which eases financing constraints ex ante. The cost is that headquarters may pool cash flows from several projects, thereby accumulate internal funds, and make follow-up investments without having to return to the capital market. Absent any capital market discipline, however, it is more difficult for investors to force headquarters to pay out funds, which tightens ex-ante financing constraints.

Son Ku Kim, Keunkwan Ryu

This paper studies the issue of designing an optimal organizational form: design for sub-units' task allocation, decision-making structure, and incentive schemes for organizational members. Depending on the way tasks are allocated between the sub-units, and whether decision-making is centralized or not, organizations face a trade-off between coordination and information. Task allocation by production processes calls for coordination more strongly than the allocation by final products. Centralized decision-making serves for better coordination, whereas decentralization serves for better information. The coordinational benefit under centralization gets bigger as the organization's common uncertainty increases, and this benefit is magnified when the sub-units are functionally divided by production processes. The informational benefit under decentralization gets bigger as the organization's local uncertainty increases, and this benefit is magnified when the sub-units are designed autonomous. Thus, complementarily designed organizations tend to have centralized decision-making structures and fixed salary scheme, whereas less complementarily designed organizations tend to have decentralized decision-making and 'pay for performance' incentive contract.

Russell W. Cooper, Hubert Kempf

This article studies the effects of political institutions on inflation. In our view, hyperinflation is the manifestation of a tragedy of commons in a divided society with a weak central monetary authority. Economies with fiat money are inherently inflation-prone: the collection of seigniorage through the inflation tax is less conspicuous than other taxes, and the printing of money is essentially costless. In many countries, the control of the money supply is de facto or de jure decentralized. Sets of agents (in various regions or interest groups) can effectively pressure the central government to finance their expenditures. As these interest groups pursue their self-interest, they neglect the welfare effects of the inflation tax on individuals in other groups. These elements combine to imply that countries which rely on the inflation tax to meet the resource demands of competing interest groups will typically experience inefficiently (due to negative spillovers) high inflation.

Jiahua Che

This paper analyzes financial dual track in China. We show that the co-existence of a soft-budget track (under centralized financing) and a hard-budget track (under decentralized financing) can be strictly more efficient than the two pure cases. Our argument is as follows. First, a hard budget constraint alone is not sufficient to induce sound firm performances, positive incentives in terms of firms' profitability are needed as well. Second, for an economy such as China where many firms are hopeless money losers, there is pecuniary externality in financing. That is, the total number of firms financed into operation in the economy can affect the profitability of all firms. This paper offers a number of examples of such externality. In such an economy, centralized financing helps internalize the externality, improving firms' profitability, and yet it leads to a soft budget constraint. Under decentralized financing, budget constraint is hard, but firms suffer from low profitability. A financial dual track does better: the existence of the soft-budget sector improves profitability, enhancing the disciplinary effect in the hard-budget sector. Based on this analysis, the paper sheds light on the complementary relation between soft budget constraint syndrome in the state sector and the remarkable growth of the non-state sector in China

Jiahua Che

I put forward a new theoretical framework to analyze the relationship between soft budget constraint syndrome and the economic performances of firms. It differs from the existing theoretical framework, à la Dewatripont and Maskin (1995), in the soft budget constraint literature. In this paper, soft budget constraint syndrome arises when firms that are expected to lose money are financed. The paper highlights a trade-off between hard and soft budget constraints. While soft budget constraints may compromise firms' incentives to improve performances, an all-out effort to harden budget constraints may put macro stability at risk, especially for economies suffering from allocative inefficiency. Based on this trade-off, the paper shows that a transition from centralized financing to decentralized financing in fact compromises firms' incentives to improve their performances, whereas a transition from centralized financing to a dual track system enhances efficiency. In the dual track system, budget constraints are soft in the centralized track but the macro stability of the economy is assured as a result. The macro stability enhances the disciplinary effect of hard budget constraints in the decentralized track, which in turn promotes firms' incentives to improve performances. The paper sheds light on a complementary relation between soft budget constraint syndrome in the state sector (i.e., the centralized track) and the remarkable growth of the non-state sector (i.e., the decentralized track) in China.

隆雄 飯田, タカオ イイダ, Takao Iida

No abstract is available for this record.

Eduard Braun

The current economic problems in Southeast Asia can be attributed not to too much reliance on financial markets, but to too little . Like the U.S. economy a century ago, the emerging Asian economies do not have welldeveloped capital markets and so remain heavily dependent on their banking systems to finance growth. For all its benefits, banking is “not only basically 19th‐century technology, but disaster‐prone technology.” The extreme maturity (and, in some cases, currency) mismatch on banks' balance sheets plus the first‐come, first‐served nature of the deposit obligations mean that banks are inherently vulnerable to massive runs by depositors—and that their economies are subjected to periodic credit crunches. And, as the author says, “in the summer of 1997 a banking‐driven disaster struck in East Asia, just as it had struck so many times before in U.S. history.” In this century, In this century, the U.S. economy has steadily reduced its dependence on banks by developing “dispersed and decentralized” financial markets. In so doing, it has increased the efficiency of the U.S. capital allocation process and reduced its susceptibility to the credit crunches that have occurred throughout U.S. history. By contrast, Japan has not reduced its economy's dependence on banks, and its efforts to deal with its banking problems have served only to destabilize itself as well as its neighbors. Developing countries in Southeast Asia and elsewhere are urged not to follow the Japanese example, but to take measures aimed at developing financial markets and institutions that will either substitute for or complement bank products and services.

Haizhou Huang, Chenggang Xu

Through analyzing the softness and hardness of budgeting constraints in research and development (R&D) investment under different institutions, we develop a theory of optimal R&D financing. Our theory not only provides a clear comparison of investment efficiency between centralized economies and market economies but also extends the analysis of soft budget constraints to firms in market economy. Based on this theory, we characterize optimal choices of R&D project financing in centralized and decentralized economies. Our results explain why some projects are financed internally by a large firm but others are cofinanced externally by several firms. We also explain what makes a centralized economy inefficient in R&D.

Zvi Bodie, Robert C. Merton

An important function of the financial system is to serve as a key source of information that helps coordinate decentralized decision-making in various sectors of the economy. Households and investors use interest rates, futures prices and security prices in making their consumption-saving decisions and portfolio allocation decisions. Interest rates and prices provide important signals to managers of firms in their selection of investment projects and financings. This paper illustrates the role played by financial markets in providing information about the future volatility-that is, the degree of uncertainty-of economic variables such as interest rates, exchange rates, commodity prices, and stock, bond and other security prices. It has two basic goals: (1) to show the importance of volatility for all sorts of policy decisions in the private and public sectors of the economy; and (2) to show how ex ante estimates of future volatility can be extracted from the prices of securities.

Joel N. Morse

No abstract is available for this record.

Kiyoko HAGIHARA

During the periods of high economic growth, outmigration from agricultural and mountain villages to urban areas increased rapidly. As a result overpopulation in the urban areas and depopulation in rural areas have become social problems.The rural areas play a very important role particularly in supplying food, conserving national land, cultivating the head sources of a stream and conserving the natural environment. However, it has become difficult to manage the community and these areas have not been able to play the abovementioned roles in depopulated areas. Therefore, the Japanese government has taken a number of measures to promote rural areas and alleviate some of the problems. In this paper the depopulation problem is considered from the viewpoint of local finance. Attention is paid particularly to the role of intergovernmental grants.Firstly, using a concept of local public goods, the inefficiency which results from free migration is considered. If in moving from one region to another a migrant does not account for the effect of his moving on the tax price of the public good of residents in the region he leaves or enters, Tiebout type of decentralized free market equilibria may not be Pareto-efficient. And if this externality is not internalized by centralized decision-making, the one region may be overpopulated and the other underpopulated. In the framework of a simple model the source of inefficiency of resource allocation is shown. Using the same model the analysis is extended to consider the role for intergovernmental grants in the face of such inefficiencies. And it is suggested that the central government may be justified in using a system of intergovernmental grants to overcome these inefficiencies.In order to explore the role of intergovernmental grants, the model is applied to Agatsuma district of Gunma Prefecture, a district which includes a number of the depopulated towns and villages. Firstly, settled accounts of revenue and expenditure from 1965 F. Y. to 1982 F. Y. are investigated. The percentage of transfer payments including grants from both the Japanese government and the government of Gunma Prefecture has become very large since the laws of the depopulated areas enforced. Secondly, principal expenditures are determined for each town and village. In each town expenditure on education and promotion for agriculture and construction account for a very large percentage of total expenditure. Finally, the level of components which constitutes residents' utility is examined. There is still a difference between the levels of many components in this district and those in the other region.From the above results it is shown that the situation is going to a desired direction by various measures, particularly intergovernmental grants. However, in some areas there is still a possibility of the situation deteriorating. Therefore, it is necessary to allocate intergovernmental grants carefully as well as encouraging each local government to work autonomously.

John Laitner

This article constructs a decentralized growth model with two production sectors, one having competitive firms and the other oligopolists. Since capitalized pure profits for the latter sector constitute an asset which household savings must finance, we show that imperfect competition can reduce steady-state national output through both a "static effect" on allocative efficiency and a "dynamic effect" on aggregative capital accumulation. After presenting a theoretical analysis, we generate several numerical examples. The latter suggest that the "dynamic effect" of monopoly may be significantly larger than the "static effect" in practice.

Petrus Hendrikus Maria Ruys

I. Economics.- 1. Introduction.- 1.1. Economic theory and economic environment.- 1.2. Private and public goods.- 1.3. The duality approach.- 1.4. Decentralized allocation mechanisms.- 2. Equilibrium in a system of economic relations.- 2.1. General equilibrium theory.- 2.2. Optimal allocations.- 2.3. An exchange economy.- 3. Production.- 3.1. Production sets and production multifunctions.- 3.2. Conditions in the production model.- 3.3. The price structure corresponding to a technology.- 3.4. Conditions in the price space.- 3.5. Preference orderings of inputs.- 3.6. Satiation for and dispensability of inputs.- 3.7. The demand- and the price-multifunction.- 4. Consumption and production of public goods.- 4.1. The consumption model.- 4.2. Private goods, public goods and externalities.- 4.3. Private goods, public goods and transaction costs.- 4.4. Social consumption and production.- 4.5. An economy with local public goods.- 5. Equilibrium in economies with private and public goods.- 5.1. The valuation representation of an economy.- 5.2. Equilibrium in an economy with public goods only.- 5.3. Equilibrium in an economy with private and public goods.- 5.4. The two-level price equilibrium.- 5.5. Financing the public sector.- 6. The organization of economic decisions.- 6.1. Allocation mechanisms.- 6.2. Centralization and decentralization.- 6.3. Procedures with a social preference ordering.- 6.4. Procedures with individual preference orderings.- 6.5. Multi-level organization.- 7. Extensions.- 7.1. Between values and resources.- 7.2. Theory of motion.- II. Mathematics.- 8. Basic mathematical notions and notations.- 8.1. Sets, relations and multifunctions.- 8.2. Continuity of multifunctions.- 8.3. Sets and algebraic operations in Rn.- 9. Sets and duality.- 9.1. Supporting hyperplanes and separating hyperplanes.- 9.2. Polar sets.- 9.3. Reflexive sets.- 9.4. Separation and intersection of sets.- 10. Multifunction and duality.- 10.1. Operations on multifunctions.- 10.2. Properties of multifunctions.- 10.3. Convex processes.- 10.4. Convex cone-interior processes.- 10.5. Convex star and convex aureole processes.- Summary.- References.

B. Balamurugan, T. Poongodi, M. R. Manu, S. Karthikeyan · 5 authors

The moving image archive of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) includes a copy of the film The Double Day (1975), cataloged in the series Moving Images Relating to International Development Programs and Activities, 1979–1991, a collection of more than eight hundred titles “created to provide information on assistance programs supported by the Agency for International Development (AID).”1 Yet, The Double Day does not, in fact, directly depict or engage with any specific development or aid initiative. Instead, the film—directed by US-based Brazilian filmmaker Helena Solberg as part of the International Women’s Film Project collective and described as “the first Latin American feminist documentary”—examines the gendered dynamics of paid and unpaid labor through the testimonies of women from Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Mexico.2 Its presence in the USAID archive is likely a consequence of its funding history, having received support from the Inter-American Foundation, a USAID-affiliated entity; the development agencies of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden; the United Nations Development Program; and US philanthropist Calvin Cafritz.3These transnational funding structures not only enabled the film’s production but also determined its archival destination, which renders legible its place within the history of international development.4 The Double Day’s institutional trajectory reflects the shifting configurations of aid, gender, and media during a historic moment when women were being repositioned at the center of what Arturo Escobar has described as development’s “regimes of visuality.”5 Especially relevant to The Double Day’s production and exhibition was the international institutional framework of Women in Development (WID). Emerging in the early 1970s and culminating in United Nations’ proclamation of 1975 as International Women’s Year, WID emphasized women’s participation in the global economy as both an index and mechanism of development. Indeed, The Double Day premiered at the World Conference of the International Women’s Year, held in Mexico City.6 Within this context, the film forms part of a broader trajectory of media use by international organizations that intensified during the 1970s—as best exemplified by Media Habitat, a collection of 236 documentary films commissioned by the United Nations to represent urban and rural development initiatives for the 1976 Habitat Conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver. As a policy-shaping initiative, Media Habitat primarily featured films from the Global South intended not only to illustrate but also to help codify standardized audiovisual markers of “underdevelopment” that determined access to the emerging global economic order and to international aid.7Framed in relation to these international institutions and their operations, The Double Day could similarly be considered “development media”—exemplifying the type of nonfiction media produced and distributed outside of the commercial film circuits whose aspects and subcategories have been variously described in scholarship as nontheatrical, useful, sponsored, institutional, industrial, educational, or nonprofessional/amateur.8 Scholars working in this area have emphasized the institutional contexts of such media’s production and exhibition infrastructures as shaping its instrumentalized effects. From a feminist perspective, such an approach is crucial to grappling with the broader question of how “gender impacts [these works’] shape, content, and trajectories.”9 Yet we also argue that, taken in isolation, the institutional and infrastructural contexts are insufficient to account for the complex relationship between media and development, potentially not only limiting our understanding of the reach and impact of development but also distorting our interpretive conclusions. For example, to categorize The Double Day as “development media” is to overlook the film’s place within Solberg’s directorial oeuvre, as well as within the histories of both transnational women’s filmmaking and radical Latin American documentary cinema to which it simultaneously belongs. Such exclusive framing is especially limiting given that women globally were disproportionately engaged in nonfiction production throughout the twentieth century—sometimes by political choice but more often due to structural exclusions from fiction filmmaking. Even in nonfiction historiography, however, institutional media has remained particularly marginal, reinforcing hierarchies that separate such works from the aesthetic and authorial frameworks through which film history has been constructed.10 This marginalization not only tends to erase women’s contributions but also presumes a “weak” or derivative authorship, rendering these films unworthy of the interpretive attention needed to apprehend their aesthetic and political complexity.11 The same dynamic is likely to structure assumptions about “development media” as well.Categorizing The Double Day exclusively within this category would further prompt us to assume top-down institutional analyses that have been characteristic of both institutional media methodologies and the scholarship on development at large. This, in turn, would risk obscuring this film’s radical Marxist approach to women’s labor as well as its concrete contribution to activism and its attendant grassroot structures. In Mexico City, The Double Day became a catalyst for feminist solidarity in practice when one of the film’s protagonists, Bolivian activist and trade unionist Domitila Barrios de Chungara, was invited to participate in the Tribune of Non-Governmental Organizations held alongside the official UN conference.12 There, Barrios de Chungara challenged Western feminist priorities by reframing the debate around labor, class, and imperialism, helping to articulate a shared Third World feminist agenda that significantly departed from the developmentalist vision of the United Nations and USAID.13 Seen through the lens of activist media, The Double Day helped forge transnational solidarity networks by enabling information exchange across the diverse voices that shaped its making—from the women featured in the film to the activists who circulated it—revealing a considerably more dynamic interplay between institutional and grassroots or contingent media practices.Moreover, the film’s Latin American context—reflected in Solberg’s formation in Brazil as the only woman in Cinema Novo, its focus on women from across the region, and its premiere and key reception in Mexico City—requires grappling with the regional specificities of the very notion of development in its multiple iterations.14 Far from being an epistemological and political framework imposed solely by the Global North, both the practices of development and the theoretical foundations of developmentalism (understood as a broad and polysemic set of discourses) were shaped through the active participation of Latin American economists.15 Within this iteration, underdevelopment, as a constitutive notion of developmentalism, became central to a distinctly critical strand, which by the late 1960s became known as the dependency theory.16 This same approach is reflected in some of the best-known Latin American radical film manifestos of the time, arising precisely from the same milieus to which Solberg belonged.17These various considerations of the film’s history illustrate the methodological challenges confronting feminist scholars seeking to assess the impact of development on media projects, theories, and practices. To disregard the developmentalist context of such works by emphasizing their political aesthetics and affects risks reproducing a romanticized narrative of heroic resistance (albeit from a feminist perspective). Yet to engage exclusively with their institutional and material infrastructures risks naturalizing developmentalism’s political and epistemological foundations at the expense of the goals and beliefs of the many women who participated in these projects. The contradictions and ambivalences that animate such histories call for feminist frameworks capable of holding both institutional complicity and radical possibility in view.This challenge resonates with ongoing debates about the politics of the archive and what Allyson Field has termed “the practice of informed speculation.”18 As she reminds us, feminist, queer, and decolonial methodologies have long taught us to “press at the limits” of the archive to “inoculate our scholarship against our evidence’s afflictions.”19 The concern that the evidence we draw on in our analysis reproduces the very structures and blind spots of the dominant ideology and therefore shapes and delimits our interpretation becomes particularly urgent when engaging the developmentalist media corpus. Informed speculation offers an alternative by inviting the experimental, creative, and speculative rewriting of history, mobilizing the archive “in a project that runs counter to the original purpose, or the imperative to preserve, or the conditions that led to erasure.”20 Yet, as Field cautions, such speculative gestures must remain grounded in a deep and “intimate familiarity with the archive” that we are working with and against. Building on this imperative, we suggest that the developmentalist archive, in particular, demands expansion and critical reconsideration in ways that unsettle the very disciplinary frameworks through which it has been studied as well as the larger institutional contexts for such knowledge production.Our focus on The Double Day in the opening of this introduction thus foregrounds the entanglements of institutional and grassroots forces, local and international contexts, structural and interpersonal relations, and creative and economic factors that have shaped not only this film but the broader ecosystem of development media projects—and their preservation—over time. Addressing such a constellation involves transgressing methodologically entrenched divisions between political economy and aesthetics, between material infrastructures and affective regimes; reckoning with divergent periodizations across film history and world economics; and situating these within the local specificities of women’s movements and international institutional programs. It also demands attentiveness to the coexistence of multiple, and sometimes competing, understandings of development—each historically, geographically, and ideologically situated.We imagine this special issue as an opening toward a critical dialogue, not only about how such an approach might be enacted in practice but also about the far-reaching ways development paradigms have shaped both our objects of study and the contours of the field itself. The decision to center institutionally sponsored films across all the essays in this issue is deliberate and enables us to highlight institutional critique as a vital methodological imperative within our analytical framework. Created within the frameworks of international organizations, state agencies, or NGOs, these films’ histories make legible the institutional logics that underwrite their production. Yet our critique does not stop at these specific entities. Rather, we argue for a broader interrogation of the political conditions and institutional infrastructures that shape media and knowledge production more generally. This includes contemporary corporations embedded in the digital platform economy, from streaming services to the rapid expansion of AI. Equally critical is a reflexive examination of academia itself, where departments of economics, political science, and centers for development have played a formative role in producing and legitimizing developmentalist theories and policy frameworks. While the humanities and arts have at times offered critical alternatives, they have also frequently mirrored and reinforced many of the same developmentalist assumptions. A feminist analysis of the nexus between development and media must therefore unsettle not only dominant archives but also the institutional and disciplinary foundations of our own scholarly practices.As scholars, we share the complex position of navigating the same tensions between institutional complicity and emancipatory aspiration as many of the media-makers whose work we study. Mirroring our subjects is also the transnational, collective mode of this special issue’s own production as it emerges from an ongoing informal working group we have sustained over several years. While relying on institutional and disciplinary affordances—such as university funding for conferences or access to academic publishing platforms—we have been working toward creating a community that exceeds, and often resists, the prevailing logics of our academic institutions. Our aim has been to create a space for shared inquiry and mutual support that pushes back against disciplinary siloing and technocratic neoliberal assessment modes of both labor and knowledge production—and this certainly extends to our experience collaborating with the journal editors throughout the publication process. Our goal has been to examine both the persistence and variability of developmentalism, understood as what Gustavo Esteva calls a “powerful but fragile semantic constellation,” as a conceptual formation that has historically inspired, legitimized, and mobilized media projects across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.21 And gendered biopolitics, from population control to gender mainstreaming, have remained integral to development policies and media practices, recurring across formats from institutional newsreels to film festivals.We share the conviction that, far beyond the history of nonfiction institutional media, development (as both a broad ideological project and a network of material and institutional practices) and developmentalism (as a set of discourses and theoretical models associated with development) have exerted a far-reaching influence on film and media cultures at large. As such, they must be treated as a major force in shaping global film and media systems and also the many ongoing assumptions behind their critical discourses. The discipline of communication studies was founded on modernization theory governed by Cold War goals of dissemination of Western liberal democracy around the world, while “an area studies framework allowed compartmentalizing Western and non-Western outcomes of technologies that were always claimed to be universal.”22 Despite critique from postcolonial and critical race studies, many of these frameworks have remained foundational for media theory.23 In historical scholarship, as we increasingly move beyond “modernity” as a dominant conceptual anchor, engaging with practices and discourses of development opens more precise analytical pathways. These film and media’s entanglements with the logics of and economic and the associated with as well as their conceptual underdevelopment, and impact in as diverse as and of media aesthetic and paradigms in film and film and funding are developmentalist assumptions to the they to underwrite the narrative and logics of and global media from the structure of the film to the cultures of argue that a examination of the historical entanglements between film and developmentalist aesthetics, modes of as well as infrastructures and critical the and that our contemporary media is a of the historical contours of development as a field of inquiry embedded within a of some of the methodologies by the featured in this special a of this complex history, to the larger at in media, development, and gender all its development a it as an of be with practices as divergent as and in In as we work on this the of the of the USAID the ideological that have the history of international the and of this on the global its a from development as a global practice and as an institutional and which over the has as a with its own media Yet or does not erase the historical impact of these the contradictions they have reflected and over the as the of development several crucial to the economic theories of development initiatives to and through the of the development an international policy framework at from the Global to the of the Global the by the political role of and the of the International the on was challenged by dependency theory and at development as global structural the neoliberal of the the Programs by the and World imposed and as conditions for and forms of assistance became known as the major markers for international development development has moving beyond economic to such as the Human Development and the Development and from international organizations such as the United Nations to a broader network of These frameworks increasingly of and liberal of and with what in many ways to various while the of the to development’s epistemological more scholarship has toward a of its and material the field has to a of and critical by and scholars, which development as a dynamic of conceptual and political to these the studies in this special issue call for sustained analysis in place of In we draw from a of and that in of of gender and to this special issue engage that and from Mexico to contemporary specific local historical of global distinctly feminist methodologies as well as attention to studies that this issue a in the global history of development on and documentary work in Mexico how early women infrastructures as of while US films an early of state and transnational on a outside the Global as the of developmentalist both the and markers of development media, its to the and Latin central grounded in archival also women’s in transnational and the methodological of archives on study of the series to a a digital media not by but by women not as but as subjects and within circuits of neoliberal and the aesthetics and of how development’s has models of to contemporary neoliberal paradigms of and analysis how digital and gender and practices, discourses on and their of these essays the of some of the historical of developmentalist as the question of the role of the state within such on a notion of economic as a and the dominant of development that the state as the for and through infrastructural projects. This understanding of development was shared across both of the as well as in the Third The United and the increasingly mobilized international in the of the modes of international at the postcolonial of policy and ideological These programs were at the expansion of their and of while with the and decolonial of The conceptual between modernization and development that the Cold in of and hierarchies of that long and As an of postcolonial their role as of international aid concern about the of Western development projects. In alternative across the Global South that to structural between and through policies of and In many they were further the global structures. In Latin for example, this approach was through organizations such as the United Nations for Latin and the both developmentalist projects and their have taken many forms historically, and they have and they have been to a of projects, and postcolonial and development has been and in ways and with frequently political While many of these alternative frameworks the embedded in dominant Western they often technocratic and assumptions. gender and gender as for the of to be shaped by This becomes particularly in the media that of development where women frequently a crucial associated with and women were as both the subjects and of their participation in the and labor often as the index of In this study of from the 1970s how women were as of this as these about women’s urban and recurring and of a within the own of and critique that official examination of archives and enables a feminist interrogation of their mobilizing a of the in the of contribution to this issue similarly the of a dynamic within as well as across ideological the of women’s and the media of the and as active in labor and as integral to the technocratic women became of as their labor remained a of and analysis and archival with attention to the specific of and It also transnational that as a and affective a nexus of and practices through which gender, media, and developmentalism one film not as a but as part of the of alongside and work a broader concern of this special media as a of developmentalist projects. The debates the World and which international such as the United Nations and a critical historical for such primarily by postcolonial and of the for the of media and communication infrastructures in as to counter Western The a between and economic how systems of media and reinforced global hierarchies of and in an agenda that supported and alternative media infrastructures across postcolonial contexts, the framework gender as an analytical This “gender in the 1970s by of the Women in Development in relation to The Double its political critique of with its broader to center women in development policy through and This was also in of media, which was shaped by its international reach and audiovisual production and and and Yet, as WID institutional it also to the and of the women’s development programs often by in These were by a of studies, and on and the to of women’s presence and through the of their economic and In this on the filmmaker this history directly by the and of for women by the WID framework during the with and agencies the of and against Women in at the of the neoliberal turn, when institutional media often the only to access and support to projects. The an by this dynamic as of the from the Global South are to engage with the developmentalist assumptions funding models that their similarly the as a in developmentalist media history by the of and centers on the Film a between of and the attention toward the and labor by and work was foundational the of and the of audiovisual aid, as both a of development projects and a critical for their the in this issue argue for a with media, gender, and developmentalism as an field of that is and shaped by feminist and methodologies and that challenge the entanglements between academic knowledge production and and technocratic development And while methodological these dynamics at the structural the of feminist in media and cinema by this the very a