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GEA 3001

Study Guide, Exam 2 – Final Update (3/4)

 

 

 

Growing, Mining and Making Stuff

  1. Why did countries opt for Primary Products post-independence?   Had it worked out by 1992?
  2. What are seven problems with relying on primary products? (know this well)
  3. More specifically, what is Engel’s Law, why are primary products susceptible to boom/bust, is it easy to add value, and why are primary producers highly dependent on a few markets?
  4. What are three types of trade agreements?   Why do countries put on tariffs?   What are two types of non-tariff barriers?
  5. What is the only major area of the “South” with large amounts of intra-regionall trade?   Why is there such limited South/South trade?
  6. What are NIC’s?   What countries are included? Is there some small amount of manufacturing in most countries?
  7. How did Japan, Germany and the United States help strengthen their industries in the 20th centuries?
  8. What is Fordism?  And how is the government involved in the economy under Fordism?  What is Post-Fordism?  What led to it? What dominates the U.S. Economy now?

 

Here Some Parts, There Some Parts, Everywhere Some Parts

  1. What are some obstacles to Third World Industrialization?   What is the disadvantage developing countries face in the product life-cycle geography?
  2. In industrialization, what are the three sources of money (and what are problems with each)?   Two choices of markets (and problems)?
  3. What is the basic strategy of ISI?   What were some downsides?
  4. What is EOI and what are the two prototypical countries?   How did these countries go against comparative advantage?   What did the two prototypical states have in common?   Was the government involved in the economy?
  5. What is an export processing zone?   What is it an attempt to do?   What features do they have in common?    Why are they an example of extraterritoriality?  What is made there? What are the advantages to manufacturers?   Who works in them?   What are the effects of competition between them?   Do they affect the wider economy?  (Know well)
  6. What defines a TNC?  What is their investment called?   Pros and cons?
  7. Pre World War II, who had most TNC’s?  Post WWII to 1960?   Post-1980 who was involved?    What fraction of world trade is between branches?    Which industries tend to have the biggest corporations?  
  8. In terms of TNC Geography – do colonial relationships still influence TNC investment?
  9. What is Geographical Expansion? Why do would a TNC do it?
  10. What is Geographic Specialization Strategy?   Why are computers and logistic networks key in this? What is Just-in-time production and what are its advantages?  Why does it lead to commodity chains?
  11. How do TNC’s beat local firms?   How are locations selected?

 

Money

1.      What are the three steps of research in geography?  What types of data collection are commonly used?  Types of data analysis?  What is the peer review and why is it important? New Question

2.      What are multiplier effects?  What, along with low wages, increases profits for countries manufacturing in the Third World?  What is transfer pricing and how can companies use it to their advantage?

3.        Where is most R&D done? What are some other factors concerning the type of work, local executives, and imported labor that keep FDI local impacts low?

4.      How has who competes for FDI changed and why is it a called a “race to the bottom?”

5.      Have international money flows increased over the last 3 decades? What is the global current account balance running at?

6.      What are Petrodollars and how did they come to be?  What ended up happening to them?

7.      What are lending decisions based on?   And what is that based on?

8.      In the Post WWII era, what has been the accepted currency of international exchange?   Where was the decision on this currency made, what got pegged to it, and what did it get pegged to?    What did Nixon do to it?  Carter?  What is the tricky part about having this as the international transaction currency?

9.      What is the effect of currency trading?    What cities are home to major stock markets?   Can you trade all day lon? What are futures and derivatives?   What is the effect of all this on the overall level of risk and monetary trade in the global economy?

10.  Where can countries get below market rate loans?   What is increasingly an important source of money for countries that is not a loan?

11.  What is bilateral foreign aid?   What does it include?    Who is the largest giver?  Largest givers by %? How was aid given by the Cold War?   To whom did former colonizers give aid?   What is tied aid?   What is the problem with tied aid?  What is agricultural aid and what is the problem with it?  What does appropriateness depend on?   What type of projects were favored and why?    Is local knowledge necessarily superior?  What does it mean that aide is earmarked? (Know these well)

12.  What countries got Petrodollar loans?  Why were banks willing to give them?   What went wrong by 1982?  What is this called?   Who asked for a moratorium first and why?  Why was it a problem for U.S. banks?   How was the crisis adverted for banks?

13.  Where does money for IMF and World Bank come from?  How are votes decided?  

  1. What conditions must a country adopt to get an IMF loan?  What are some impacts of these conditions? What are the three major parts of the World Bank and how are they different?   What is an IMF loan for and what are World Bank loans for?
  2. What is structural adjustment?   What was the idea behind it?   Who did it hurt?  Did it make debt better?   Did it make economies more competitive?
  3. What did Brazil and Argentina do?   What is now favored over big projects?  What source of funds is becoming more important (and what is a downside to that)? 
  4. What is microcredit?   Who gets it?    What is it used for?  Who decides what the use is?   What encourages repayment?   Why does everyone like it?
  5. What has driven the global economy (outside of China) since 2000?  What were people told about real estate prices?   What areas have been particularly impacted? (Know well – with 18, 19, 20)
  6. What happened to the relationship between prices and incomes?   What type of loans did people have to take out?   How did mortgage originators/lenders push on the risk to others?  What are CDO’s?  What is leveraging?
  7.  What did the credit rating agencies do wrong? 
  8. What happened in 2007 that began to bring the house of cards built of mortgage debt down?   What is the triple crisis in the financial system?   What can the FDIC do?   Can Britain and Iceland do the same thing? What was the role AIG played? What would be necessary to prevent a similar bubble in the future?

 

State-a-licious

  1. What is a major difference between political geography and IR?
  2. What defines a modern state?
  3. What are four different thoughts about what democracy means mentioned in the lecture?   Does that mean democracy is more of an ideal than a definite set of principles?   What type of democracy has been most implemented?
  4. What were the competing discourses of the Cold War?
  5. What are Agnew’s four threats to democracy?
  6. What were states once the guaranteers of and what makes it harder for them to do that?  How do NGO’s impact policy?  Ethnic nationalism? Transnational corporations?  Pension funds?
  7. What are little democratic practices and why are they important?
  8. What is the “administrative power” of the state, what do geo-spatial technologies allow, and what does the question become?
  9. What is a welfare state?   And what is its economic function?   Where are welfare states?  And is support distributed equally through society?   When and where did workfare come from?  What is it?  What increasingly performers functions once done by the state?
  10. What is Geopolitics primarily concerned with?  What did it mean in the 19th century? Whose knowledge did it come to define? How is critical geopolitics related to geopolitics?  What are O’Tuathails Foci of Critical Geopolitics?  What is the goal?  (Know Well)
  11. What is Risk Society and how are the threats produced?  How is security achieved?
  12. What did Singapore state do to prosper post WWII?   Why is it trying to be more fun?

 

Pop!ulation

  1. Who was Thomas Malthus, what was his idea?  What are his two types of “checks”?   Has he been proved right?   Why is he still considered important?
  2. How are Bosrup’s ideas different from Matlhus’s?   What have technologies done to the frequency of crop planting?  What did Allan show tended to happen when marginal agricultural areas reached carrying capacity? What is carrying capacity?
  3. What is Birth Rate? Fertility Rate? Death Rate?  Rate of Natural Increase? Explain the demographic transition model and how it relates to the J curve? Where are birth rates lowest?  Highest?  Problems with too many old people? What are problems with too many young people?  Why do some people still have lots of children? (Know well)
  4. Have people ever tried to draw a link between poverty and population growth?  What link is proposed?
  5. Were women always the target of population management plans?   What strongly correlates to lower birth rates?
  6. What are four examples of policies used to control population?  Have birth rates declined globally over the last three decades? What is the “missing females” problem?
  7. What are the four ideas identified by Harvey for controlling population, and what are weaknesses of each?
  8. Can the rest of the world consume like the U.S.? What is an ecological footprint?  Which country has the largest overall?  Which has the largest per capita?  Is lack of food or lack of water likely to be a bigger issue in the future?  

 

War on Germs

  1. Can the rest of the world consume like the U.S.? What is an ecological footprint?  Which country has the largest overall?  Which has the largest per capita?  Is lack of food or lack of water likely to be a bigger issue in the future?  
  2. Are famines only about lack of food?   Does population growth necessarily mean environmental destruction?  Should population be looked at in isolation?
  3. What are the three classes of health problems?   What besides death, is the major societal impact of health problems?
  4. Explain the geography of disease (be sure to know where and how children die; what are tropical diseases; where health spending is greater; what kills the old; what effects women).  (Know well, along with #8, 9)
  5. Explain three problems most health care systems share?   What is public health?
  6. Name two areas where malnutrition is on the rise, explain why, explain how food shortages impact members of the household differently, and why diaherral diseases are so bad?
  7. What is the largest killer in the third world?   What causes weakened lungs?
  8. Why has malaria had a resurgence?   Are there a lot of infections?   Does it have an economic impact?    What are some positives and negatives of DDT?  What does malaria have to do with standing water?   Why are tires a problem? (Know well with #4,9)
  9. Where is AIDS most prevalent as % of population?   Do women and children get the disease?   What section of the population tends to get wiped out by AIDS?   What was the three part message behind Uganda’s AIDS prevention program?   Why are treatment drugs more widely available now? (Know well, along with #4)
  10. What is the disease associated with the tsetse fly, and what to fake cows have to do with fighting the fly?

 

Environmental Extravaganza!: Part 1

  1. Has traditional medicine disappeared?   What type of knowledge does traditional medicine have?  Can it be helpful? Can it be harmful?
  2. Whose health problems gets more research done on them – First World or Third World?
  3. How might global warming impact disease?   How was trade and travel changed disease geography?
  4. Does Global Environmental Change necessarily imply something good or bad?  Is it only about Global Warming?  What does the fact we have built up so much infrastructure have to do with global environmental change?  Was there always recognition that humans could do long term damage to the environment rapidly?
  5. What are hazards?  Is studying them only a physical science?   What is remote sensing?  What is environmental modeling? What is Cultural Ecology?  Where are its studies done? What was environmental determinism?  What is Political Ecology?   How is it different than Cultural Ecology?   What is critical theory?  What is Eco-Feminism?  What are commodity chains?  (Know well)
  6. Why do discourses about nature also matter?  What is the common discourse shared by Judaism, Christianity and Islam?   Buddhism?   Animism?
  7. What are two ways an environmental problem can be global?   Are impacts easy to measure?  Who is the argument over what to do about environmental problems between?
  8. Were all pre-industrial societies ecologically sound?   Why is the current level of resource use just the tip of the iceberg?   What has happened to fish stocks, and why is fish farming not a great alternative?  Does the information economy still use resources?
  9. Have mineral reserves shrunk since 1950? What is the effect of substitution and recycling on scarcity?   Are these new reserves different from older reserves? 
  10. Will fresh water supply be an increasingly important issue? Where does most of the world’s fresh water go?     What % of world people will live in water scarce areas by 2025?    What is the only close substitute for fresh water, where is it used and what are the problems with it?  Why is irrigation important?  What’s up with the Aral Sea (why is it disappearing, what have been some impacts)?   
  11. What is a food regime and how is the West’s food regime changing?   What do factory farms have to do with this and what are some negative impacts of these?
  12. What is genetic modification?   What are some rewards?  Risks?   Expenses?   What is the central ethical questions about patenting genetic material?
  13. What is half of all wood used for?   Are managed forests as desirable as old growth?  What is happening as Brazil starts policing its rain forests?   But what is happening to Brazil recently (see below)
  14. What is pollution?   Why are geographers interested in it?  What is contamination?  When does it become an issue?   What is the difference between acute and chronic?  Which gets more attention?
  15. Where does pollution get dumped in the developing world?    In U.S.? Does controlling leakage guarantee freedom from pollution in the case of industrial, mining and nuclear sites?   What is acidification?   What is a hopeful case of pollution fighting?
  16. What is sustainable development?  What camps are its proponents divided into?   What have most official approaches included?  Why has wildlife received so much attention?
  17.  Why were developing countries opposed to environmental regulation?  What was the Rio Earth Summit?
  18. What can a government do to encourage sustainability?
  19. What are the ideas behind market environmentalism (ie what gets ignored in rush to develop, what is natural capital, how do you “pay” for used natural capital)?  What are some critiques?
  20. What is the most advanced (though new) environment trading scheme?   How does it work in terms of caps and offsets?  Where do offsets come from? What have been some kinks with it?
  21. What is the idea behind biofuel?  What was looked first to produce ethanol?  What is ethanol?  What are its advantages?   What is helping increase production?   What are some problems in terms of which crops are used?   What are second generation biofuels from?  What are the advantages of this? What are the advantages of algae?    What are enzyme based methods?  What will make these ethanols more viable?  (Know well)
  22. What other types of energy are being looked at?  Will there likely be one magic bullet that will dominate future energy production?

 

Helpful Stories from NPR  (hint, hint hint)

 

AIG and Ratings Agencies  http://www.thisamericanlife.org/extras/radio/382_transcript.pdf

Biofuels:  http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200804112 and http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200906262 and http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200906263