New Technologies, Global Value Chains, and the Developing Economies. 2018.
PDFUniversity of Oxford, Pathways for Prosperity Commission, September 2018
Is Populism Necessarily Bad Economics?. AEA Papers and Proceedings 2018. 2018;(108) :196-199.
AbstractI distinguish between political and economic populism. Both are averse to agencies of restraint, or, equivalently, delegation to technocrats or external rules. In the economic domain, delegation to independent agencies (domestic or foreign) occurs in two different contexts: (a) in order to prevent the majority from harming itself in the future; and (b) in order to cement a redistribution arising from a temporary political advantage for the longer-term. Economic policy restraints that arise in the first case are desirable; those that arise in the second case are much less so.
PDF Second Thoughts on Economics Rules. Journal of Economic Methodology. 2018.
What Do Trade Agreements Really Do?. Journal of Economic Perspectives. 2018;23 (2) :73-90.
AbstractAs trade agreements have evolved and gone beyond import tariffs and quotas into regulatory rules and harmonization, they have become more difficult to fit into received economic theory. Nevertheless, most economists continue to regard trade agreements such as the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) favorably. The default view seems to be that these arrangements get us closer to free trade by reducing transaction costs associated with regulatory differences or explicit protectionism. An alternative perspective is that trade agreements are the result of rent-seeking, self-interested behavior on the part of politically well-connected firms – international banks, pharmaceutical companies, multinational firms. They may result in freer, mutually beneficial trade, through exchange of market access. But they are as likely to produce purely redistributive outcomes under the guise of “freer trade.”
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