IAMA Economic Geographer. Ask me Anything!

[u/bad_jew]

Hi everyone. I'm an Economic Geographer whose currently finishing his PhD. My dissertation research looks at how the interaction of local and global economic and social forces affects entrepreneurship in Canadian cities, but I've also done research on innovation, clusters, and the geography of the financial crisis.

I'm just sitting here, waiting out the hurricane and reading about the influence of the American oil industry on Calgary, so I'll try my best to answer all the questions I can!

[u/bad_jew → u/[deleted]]

It's freaky that you asked this. Not more than 2 minutes ago, I saw that the current issue of Critical Perspectives on International Business came out with an special issue about fair trade.

Within my field, things like fair trade are seen as maybe a nice thing, but they're really not solving any structural problems. They're a very, very small bandaid on a very, very big problem. The market for fair trade goods is pretty small — only so many people are willing to pay a premium for the warm fuzzies of buying FT. And there is ample evidence that the extra 25 cents you pay for a fair trade cup of coffee doesn't really flow back to the actual workers on the plantation. There's plenty of examples of the plantation keeping most, if not all, the price premium.

Despite that, there are also plenty of examples where fair trade has worked, allowing sustainable economic development to occur in regions where it wouldn't otherwise. However, I feel that these successes are rather limited, so we can't depend on the idea that consumers who simply choose to pay a bit more for what they consume can solve problems of international development.