Introducing Partha Dasgupta: Economics: A Very Short Introduction: "At most 8% of the world's population has a standard of living more than half of today's U.S. median. Rejoice: the world today is so much fabulously richer than it was in 1800. That is a miracle. Recoil: our knowledge—of how to run governments; of how to organize markets, firms, and property; and of how to apply science and technology—is so sketchily and unevenly distributed around the world, leaving only a small part of it as what we would see as rich and huge chunks of it as what we do see as desperately poor, is a scandal, and a crime against humanity. But what is to be done about this crime against humanity?...
Noted: It is macro: recession, weak recovery, catastrophe, and then superweak recovery... https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/06/it-is-aggregate-demandrecession-weak-recovery-catastrophe-and-then-superweak-recovery.html The 2002-2007 bilateral-trade "China shock" is simply not a terribly big deal for the country as a whole: employment in traditionally-male blue-collar occupations was flat. A big deal for places that found their manufactures competing with new imports from China, yes. But not for blue-collar traditionally-male employment in the country as a whole. For the country as a whole, it is aggregate demand—2001-3 recession, weak recovery, 2007-9 catastrophe, and then superweak recovery—with a supporting role for technology-and-preferences... https://www.icloud.com/pages/0uI_a26DHDfJF66kv3wDVGpBw #noted #globaliation #macro #labormarket #equitablegrowth #riseoftherobots #highlighted 2019-06-28
Project Syndicate: U.S. as Doofus Country, China, and Grand Strategy: So what should the United States do in order to achieve the aims of this political current that wants to improve the U.S. position relative to China? Well, the U.S. could improve its relative position by demonstrating that it has a more competent, more responsive, and less corrupt government than China excuse it is a healthy democracy under the rule of law. The U.S. could improve its relative position by demonstrating that it has a more dynamic high-tech economy by accepting workers and ideas from all over the world and rewarding them handsomely. The U.S. could improve its relative position by demonstrating that it can quickly change course and get rid of gridlock causing massive sectoral disfunction—in a health care system that grossly overcharges and yet also grossly under provides care to the vulnerable, in a massive nationwide neglect of infrastructure in a stalled energy transition. The U.S. could improve its relative position by demonstrating that it can curb the moldings of malefactors of great wealth created by the maldistribution of prosperity. The U.S. could improve its relative position by once again becoming a society in which those at all levels live better than their predecessors because the fruits of economic growth are equitably distributed. In short, the U.S. could create the nation it would be had it elected Al Gore to the presidency in 2000 and Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016, and backed them with responsive and patriotic congresses... 2019-06-21
Hoisted from Eleven Years Ago: Poverty Traps: The High Price of Investment Goods in Poor Countries https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/06/poverty-traps-the-high-price-of-investment-goods-in-poor-countries-hoisted-from-ten-years-ago.html #globalization 2019-06-10
Hoisted from the Archives: Interview: "NAFTA Is Just Not a Big Deal for the U.S." 2019-06-04
Costs and Benefits of International Capital Mobility: Reply to Bhagwati: Hoisted from 20 Years Ago: Needless to say, time has left me a lot wiser: We need to design economies so that they can operate without disaster even when deregulatory clowns like those of the George W. Bush or the Donald J. Trump administrations are in control of the levers of policy at key moments. How to do that is not so clear... #globalization #macro #finance #hoistedfromthearchives #monetaryeconomics #monetarypolicy 2019-01-11
Trade and Distribution: A Multisector Stolper-Samuelson Finger Exercise: Hoisted from 2008: This argument of an inconsistency between free trade and the well-being of the majority of potential voters rests substantially on the two-factor example of the Stolper-Samuelson result. It does not fare too well when we generalize to a situation in which there are a number of different factors—even if the ownership of the abundant factors of production is very concentrated indeed... #globalization #macro #finance #hoistedfromthearchives #monetaryeconomics #monetarypolicy 2019-01-11
Costs and Benefits of International Capital Mobility: Reply to Bhagwati: Hoisted from 20 Years Ago: Needless to say, time has left me a lot wiser: We need to design economies so that they can operate without disaster even when deregulatory clowns like those of the George W. Bush or the Donald J. Trump administrations are in control of the levers of policy at key moments. How to do that is not so clear. What is clear is that only a fool today would think that our political economy would support a clever technocracy so that we might have our cake and eat it too. Indeed, the most likely scenario seems to be that we will be unable to eat our cake, and then the kleptocrats will steal it out from under our noses so that we will not have it either. In short: I should have listened harder to Jagdish 20 years ago...
A Rant on Trump, Trade, and China...: "Steve, what you are saying is simply delusional. You keep saying that Xi needs to deal because Trump is deadly serious on China and will not back down. Do remember that Trump declared victory on reforming NAFTA, "the worst trade deal in the history of the world", with small adjustments on autoparts rules-of-origin. Small adjustment on auto parts were enough to transform NAFTA, in Trump's mind, from the worst trade deal in the history of the world into something he is now very proud of. Xi has to to be thinking that he should deal with Trump the same way that Mexico did... #publicsphere #orangehairedbaboons #highlighted #globalization 2019-02-08
Globalization, Trade, and Distribution
