The Washington Consensus has been wobbly for some time, challenged by abundant research COMMENT | DANI RODRIK, LAURA TYSON & THOMAS FRICKE | Paradigm shifts in mainstream economic thinking usually accompany crises demanding new answers, as occurred after stagflation – low growth and high inflation – gripped advanced economies in the …
Read More »Services-led economic development
It’s the way forward for developing countries seeking to enhance labour-absorbing productivity COMMENT | DANI RODRIK & ROHAN SANDHU | The future of developing countries is in services. This may sound odd in view of the fact that industrialisation has been the traditional road to growth and eventual prosperity, one traveled …
Read More »The two faces of free trade
COMMENT | DANI RODRIK | Few terms in economics are as ideologically loaded as “free trade.” Advocate it nowadays, and you are likely to be regarded as an apologist for plutocrats, financiers, and footloose corporations. Defend open economic borders, and you will be labeled naive or, worse, a stooge of the …
Read More »America’s emulation of China
New rules are needed as strains in their relationship multiply over industrial policies that are not so different COMMENT | DANI RODRIK | It is common to think of US-China tensions as the inevitable result of stark differences between the two countries. The United States has a fully capitalist market economy, …
Read More »Better jobs mean better development
Governments must learn how to enhance productivity and employment in labour-intensive service sectors COMMENT | DANI RODRIK | Conventional economics has always had a blind spot when it comes to jobs. The problem goes back to Adam Smith, who placed consumers, rather than workers, on the throne of economic life. …
Read More »Doing economic nationalism the right way
When governments make nationalist mistakes, it is primarily their own people who pay the price COMMENT | DANI RODRIK | With the United States leading the way, the world seems to be entering a new era of economic nationalism, as many countries prioritise their domestic social, economic, and environmental agendas over …
Read More »Protectionism, development, redistribution, and more
COMMENT | Dani Rodrik | Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School, President of the International Economic Association and the author of `Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy’ (Princeton University Press, 2017) says more… Project Syndicate: “What some decry as protectionism and mercantilism,” you …
Read More »The global economy’s real enemy
Why geopolitics and not protectionism should be the worry for the future health of the world economy COMMENT | DANI RODRIK | “The era of free trade seems to be over. How will the world economy fare under protectionism?” This is one of the most common questions I hear nowadays. But …
Read More »Focus on productivity, not technology
New technologies may fail to lift all boats because their benefits can be captured by a small group COMMENT | DANI RODRIK | Economists have long argued that productivity is the foundation of prosperity. The only way a country can increase its standard of living sustainably is to produce more goods …
Read More »America’s new trade policies
Will its restrictive approach to China and subversion of the WTO leave the developing world behind? COMMENT | Dani Rodrik | Developing countries are increasingly worried that the United States will turn its back on the multilateral trade regime. Amid rising geopolitical tensions, policymakers in lower- and middle-income countries fear that a …
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