The United States needs to rethink its trade policy. A new report offers a blueprint, consisting of ten major reforms.
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Davos Elites Love to Advocate for Equality – So Long As Nothing Gets Done
The return to the industrial relations and tax policies of the early 19th century has been spearheaded by people who speak the language of equality, respect, participation, and transparency.
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The Malleable Demand for Trade Protection: How Political Campaigns Can Easily Manipulate Public Attitudes Toward Public Policy
Where does today’s anti-trade sentiment come from? A new study finds that people are particularly sensitive to job losses and outsourcing due to international trade. Protectionist sentiments, the authors find, can be magnified given the right narrative frames.
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The Inequality Paradox: Rising Inequalities Nationally, Diminishing Inequality Worldwide
Workers in emerging economies benefitted from globalization and workers in rich countries, on balance, did not. Overturning globalization, however, will neither work nor bring a real improvement to the Western middle classes.
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Obesity and Globalization: Evidence from Mexico
Has Mexico imported its obesity epidemic from the United States? A new study suggests that the answer to this question is “yes.”
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Does Sweden’s Radical Right Reflect Too Much Social Inclusivity, Or Too Little?
Many have attributed the success of the far-right Sweden Democrats to Sweden’s open immigration policy. Instead, a new study shows that income inequality and labor-market conditions may have fueled the rise of the Swedish radical right.
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How to Even Out the Pains and Gains from International Trade
The idea of creating transfer schemes to compensate the losers from international trade yet still preserve some of the gains faces a myriad of implementation problems. But a progressive tax system can deliver many of the same benefits, Lyon and Waugh of NYU’s Stern School argue in new research.
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Marx and Modern Microeconomics
Few economists doubt that Marx flunked economics, a judgement mostly based on his labor theory of value. But this column argues that Marx’s representation of the power relationship between capital and labor in the firm is an essential insight for understanding and improving modern capitalism. Indeed, this insight is incorporated into standard principal–agent models of labor and credit markets.
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Baldwin on Globalization: “A Lot of the Narrative Is Based on the US as If It Were the Whole World”
Richard Baldwin, professor of international trade at the Graduate Institute of Geneva and editor-in-chief of VoxEU.org, talks to ProMarket about the convergence between the G7 and emerging countries, the United States’ failure to build a social contract to mediate the changes of globalization, and his confidence that—rumors of trade war notwithstanding—the international trade regime is actually quite resilient.
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“Globalization Has Contributed to Tearing Societies Apart”
In an interview with ProMarket, Harvard economist Dani Rodrik explained where globalization went wrong, how trade agreements serve rent-seeking by politically well-connected firms, and why the only solution to the rise of political populism is an economic populism that reimagines the institutions of capitalism.
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“No Mistake About it: A Revolt Against Globalization is Underway!”
In this installment of ProMarket’s new interview series, Columbia Law School’s John C. Coffee Jr. shares some thoughts on political engagement by corporations. “Milton Friedman seems to have been wrong in his insistence that directors consider only the interests of shareholders.”
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