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International Trade
A Category Archive (90 entries)
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November 8, 2008
International Trade
David Henderson
My co-blogger Arnold has an excellent blog on the auto industry. There's more to say, though. Notice his first quote from Obama: The auto industry is the backbone of American manufacturing and a critical part of our attempt to reduce... MORE
October 25, 2008
Energy, Environment, Resources
David Henderson
Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, presidential campaign years give us economists a lot of "teaching moments," that is, chances to educate the public about basic, important economic truths. This campaign year is no different. I... MORE
October 13, 2008
International Trade
Arnold Kling
He wins this year's Nobel in economics. Tyler Cowen has an excellent commentary and links. Before Krugman, the only explanatory variable in international trade was factor endowments. You produced stuff because you happened to have the right type of land,... MORE
June 25, 2008
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Drew Carey goes after trade-bashers in a video that would fit well with an intro economics class.... MORE
June 11, 2008
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen writes, most people support their countries to a highly irrational degree in most international questions or disputes. This is part of a long counterpoint to Dani Rodrik on why people oppose free trade. One way to view the... MORE
April 15, 2008
International Trade
Bryan Caplan
The Cato Institute is making it really easy to discover politicians' voting records on free trade. With the click of a button, for example, we can find out the trade positions of Dorgan and Wyden, the demagogues who bedeviled Robin... MORE
March 16, 2008
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Greg Mankiw writes, A 2006 poll of Ph.D. members of the American Economic Association found that 87.5 percent agreed that “the U.S. should eliminate remaining tariffs and other barriers to trade.” The benefits from an open world trading system are... MORE
February 4, 2008
International Trade
Arnold Kling
My latest essay says, In the absence of hegemony, trade is impaired. If Marco Polo wants to buy goods in Afghanistan and sell them in China, he has to be able to avoid having his goods stolen, either by bandits... MORE
January 24, 2008
International Trade
Bryan Caplan
If you don't like telling people No, a convenient alternative is setting conditions you know other people won't accept. Then the impasse is their fault, you see. Take free trade, for example:...Democrats do not flat-out oppose lower barriers to trade,... MORE
January 17, 2008
International Trade
Bryan Caplan
I second Arnold's recommendation of Alex's column in Forbes. But for me, the highlight is the way that he explains the link between population and economic growth, and the demand and supply of innovation. First, demand:The cost of developing drugs... MORE
January 6, 2008
International Trade
Arnold Kling
He writes, Americans who want to stop the world fear that the nation either already is or is destined to become a victim of globalization. Such pessimism seems downright un-American. It is also fundamentally illogical. After all, much of globalization... MORE
October 21, 2007
International Trade
Arnold Kling
A 2-1/2 minute video lesson, from Milton Friedman. It is based on the story I, Pencil, by Leonard Read. Thanks to Don Boudreaux for the pointer.... MORE
October 14, 2007
International Trade
Arnold Kling
If you believe Matt Ridley, it's Ricardian comparative advantage. His is one of many answers to the Edge question of What's your formula? your equation? your algorithm?. Other interesting answers from Tooby, Kurzweil, Haidt, and many others.... MORE
October 13, 2007
International Trade
Bryan Caplan
I was surprised to find this at the Common Dreams News Center ("Breaking News and Views for the Progressive Community"):[R]eal free trade implies not only duty-free movement of goods and capital, but free movement of labour across borders, which neither... MORE
October 9, 2007
International Trade
Arnold Kling
The New York Times turned Russ Roberts loose, along with some other economists, on the Republican Presidential debate. One of Roberts' comments: Mr. Romney is asked if he still supports trade even though we’ve lost 5 million jobs to foreign... MORE
September 24, 2007
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Robert Driskill writes First consider the assertion that "nations generally gain from trade, however, it is quite possible that international trade may hurt particular groups within nations... ." What could the authors [Krugman and Obstfeld, in a leading international economics... MORE
August 1, 2007
International Trade
Arnold Kling
The Washington Post reports, Powerful senators from both sides of the aisle, Schumer among them, are pushing two bills that threaten retaliatory action if China does not budge. For the first time, the idea is gaining broad support. The bills... MORE
July 13, 2007
International Trade
Bryan Caplan
Scheve and Slaughter have gotten a lot of attention for their Foreign Affairs piece on "A New Deal for Globalization." They argue that we can squelch popular support for protectionism by making the tax code more progressive:The best way to... MORE
June 28, 2007
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Hal Varian describes a study that gives insight into the details of globalization. Even though Chinese workers contribute only about 1 percent of the value of the iPod, the export of a finished iPod to the United States directly contributes... MORE
May 7, 2007
International Trade
Bryan Caplan
Alan Blinder's been making waves by fretting about outsourcing. But here's the bottom line, via Mankiw: After the Blinder-Bhagwati debate last week, there was a dinner at the Harvard Faculty Club at which Ben Friedman asked Alan a good question:... MORE
April 12, 2007
International Trade
Bryan Caplan
I never touch the stuff, but tomorrow I'm on a panel discussing the coffee trade at the Johnson Center. It's all part of GMU's International Week. While getting ready for the talk, I was pleased to learn that activists concerned... MORE
January 1, 2007
International Trade
Bryan Caplan
One day I expect my sons to give me a grand tour of Romania. Thanks to their mom, grandparents, and company, my sons' Romanian is at least as good as their English. So I've got more than just an academic... MORE
December 25, 2006
International Trade
Bryan Caplan
The most vociferous bearer of anti-foreign bias that I know is also a life-long car afficionado. (He and his buddies call themselves "car guys.") A couple of days ago he was telling me about the low level of quality control... MORE
August 2, 2006
International Trade
Bryan Caplan
According to standard government statistics, the U.S. has accumulated a massive debt to the rest of the world during the last three decades - over 5 trillion dollars. No statistical tricks, however clever, are going to erase that debt. Or... MORE
July 30, 2006
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Clive Crook writes (link expires next month), Liberal trade works exactly like a resource-saving technology. So, it makes exactly as much sense for a country to deny itself the advantages of open borders to trade as it would to deny... MORE
April 19, 2006
International Trade
Arnold Kling
I blame Tyler Cowen for pointing me to this post by Matthew Iglesias. one is constantly reading articles in the press condemning one European electorate or another for refusing to agree to "painful" reforms that are nonetheless "necessary." This example... MORE
March 27, 2006
International Trade
Arnold Kling
In my latest essay, I write, The Battle of the Borders is a distraction. In the context of an existential threat coming from militant Islam, Mexicans and other Hispanics seeking better opportunity in the United States are, at worst, a... MORE
March 21, 2006
International Trade
Bryan Caplan
Non-economists suffer from anti-foreign bias, a tendency to underestimate the benefits of interacting with foreigners. But how stubborn is this bias? A well-crafted survey by Michael Hiscox has the answers. Everyone in his sample was asked "Do you favor or... MORE
March 5, 2006
International Trade
Bryan Caplan
How can you tell whether a worker is "low-skilled" or "high-skilled"? Most economists' knee-jerk reaction is to see how many years of education the worker has. But a far better measure is simply labor income. If you've got a Ph.D.... MORE
December 3, 2005
International Trade
Bryan Caplan
Economic historians have long known that a key plank of Nazi economic policy was autarky. They took the usual nonsense about the dangers of foreign trade seriously, and tried very hard to eliminate Germany's "dependence" on the rest of the... MORE
November 12, 2005
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Angry Bear reports that some bloggers on the left have been having a debate on whether or not free trade is a good thing. In my view, those who think "not" are doomed to intellectual failure. One of the good... MORE
August 19, 2005
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Greg Mankiw and Phillip L. Swagel write, In February, seven of nine newly elected senators publicly endorsed the Byrd Amendment, a provision that encourages American companies to file antidumping lawsuits by awarding the revenues collected from the resulting tariffs to... MORE
August 2, 2005
International Trade
Arnold Kling
are better than average wages, according to Benjamin Powell and David Skarbek. Their longer paper is here. It says, The apparel industry has been widely criticized for "exploiting" Third World workers in sweatshops, but the data show that these workers... MORE
April 21, 2005
International Trade
Arnold Kling
In a wide-ranging lecture, Vernon Smith says, No one has said it better than David Hume over 250 years ago, when he said that there are just three laws of human nature: 1) the right of possession, 2) its transference... MORE
March 21, 2005
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Gary Becker makes the case against the drug war. After totaling all spending, a study by Kevin Murphy, Steve Cicala, and myself estimates that the war on drugs is costing the US one way or another well over $100 billion... MORE
February 4, 2005
International Trade
Arnold Kling
In this essay, I argue that energy conservation is not a useful tool of foreign policy. In my view, the worst policy option of all is to subsidize the use of alternative forms of energy. If other forms of energy... MORE
January 26, 2005
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Should you join the AARP if you disagree with its political positions? Carrie Lukas says no. So does Professor Bainbridge. Why? Because they are just one more liberal special interest group, albeit a particularly well camoflauged and effective one (using... MORE
November 9, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
The link may only work for a day, but Tyler Cowen and John Irons go at it on the online WSJ over outcourcing. I think that Tyler supplies all of the highlights: Outsourcing resembles technical progress in its economics; in... MORE
October 13, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Bruce Bartlett surveys recent cost-benefit analysis. In July, economist Martin N. Baily, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton, looked at who benefits from outsourcing. He found that... on balance, the U.S. economy gains $1.12 to $1.14... MORE
October 7, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
I attended most of this Cato Institute Conference on trade, outsourcing, and the labor market. A few notes: Federal Reserve Board Vice-Chairman Roger Ferguson's opening speech was outstanding. I commend it to anyone who teaches undergraduate economics as a useful... MORE
September 29, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Daniel Drezner writes that actual data on outsourcing has been hard to come by. Now, however, we can add some actual figures to the overheated debate. The Government Accountability Office has issued its first review of the data, and one... MORE
September 20, 2004
Labor Market
Arnold Kling
Bruce Nussbaum of Business Week writes, the surge in companies going to India, China, and Eastern Europe in search of very cheap brainpower may soon be coming to an end -- far sooner than anyone has anticipated. Why? Simply put,... MORE
September 10, 2004
Austrian Economics
Arnold Kling
Since the name of Paul Samuelson came up recently, I thought I would toss out a few random impressions of him. I only had Samuelson for one course, which I believe was in the Spring of 1977. It was part... MORE
September 9, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Can trade make us worse off? Evidently, Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson is going to make that claim. Trade, in other words, may not always work to the advantage of the American economy, according to Mr. Samuelson. In an interview last... MORE
August 24, 2004
Labor Market
Arnold Kling
Julian Sanchez picked up from Gene Healy a Times of India story with a new twist on outsourcing. Says a programmer on Slashdot.org who outsourced his job: "About a year ago I hired a developer in India to do my... MORE
August 10, 2004
International Trade
Michael Munger
by Michael Munger Guest Blogger Dumping, or the practice of a producer in one market selling below cost in another market to drive out competition, has a dubious logical pedigree. But its political history is second to none: a perfect... MORE
July 27, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Three recent pro-trade articles of interest. First, Peter Gordon refers to some academic surveys in support of the benefits of globalization. Second, the Washington Post argues that the Democrats' platform is too anti-trade. Finally, Joseph Stiglitz argues that international trade... MORE
June 23, 2004
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
Two piece in the Wall Street Journal challenge the idea that export-led growth is the path to economic success. Amar Bhide writes, The Indian software industry now employs around half a million professionals. Under optimistic projections, the industry will add... MORE
April 27, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
I'm at a conference put on by the Milken Institute, and hence the light blogging. At one session on outsourcing and jobs, Clarence Schmitz, the CEO of an outsourcing firm, said that they had anticipated needing 1.2 Indian workers to... MORE
April 8, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
When you open up trade opportunities, will the benefits go to people with high incomes or people with low incomes? Brad DeLong walks through the logic that says that if foreigners have a comparative advantage in high-income occupations (such as... MORE
March 24, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Netscape founder Marc Andreessen has some suggestions, including: * Innovation and entrepreneurialism -- anything new we tend to be really good at * Software design * Advanced chip design (CPUs, 3D accelerators, etc.) * Networking systems design ... * Law... MORE
March 18, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Brink Lindsey offers "one-stop shopping" for a list of common complaints about trade and outsourcing and their refutations. One excerpt: Again and again, serious and influential voices have raised the cry that the sky is falling. It never does. The... MORE
March 4, 2004
Social Security
Arnold Kling
In this essay, I argue that Congress treats economists the way the Inquisition treated heretics. Why do the Inquisitors have it in for economists? Ultimately, politicians tell the people what we want to hear. They think that we want to... MORE
February 26, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
What happens when you take free trade to extremes among states with uneven incomes? Virginia Postrel suggests looking at the fifty United States as an example. The United States is one giant free trade zone. Businesses can move their plants,... MORE
February 25, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Russell Roberts speculates on what might happen if Indian outsourcing really gets out of hand. suppose Indians decided to work for free and give away the software, the ultimate competitive threat. If outsourcing work to low-wage Indians is bad, surely... MORE
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Walter Williams explains how sugar protectionism has caused candy manufacturing to be outsourced. the protectionist miracle that Congress has created for the sugar industry has cost anywhere from 7,500 to 10,000 jobs in sugar-using industries due to higher sugar costs.... MORE
February 24, 2004
Labor Market
Arnold Kling
Stuart Anderson looks at the arithmetic of Indiana's effort to save jobs from outsourcing. Out of 65 contract employees, Tata would have employed a number of Hoosiers through an Indiana-based subcontractor, but would also have used Indians currently employed by... MORE
February 20, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Alex Tabarrok points out how government ends up paying too much for pharmaceuticals. in some areas, Medicaid accounts for a large fraction of the market...In this situation it makes sense for pharmaceutical companies to raise prices - they lose customers... MORE
February 16, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Anti-outsourcing alarmists say that India has an "infinite supply of cheap labor." If that were true, then we would not be reading stories like this. According to a Nasscom Hewitt Total Rewards Survey 2003, the entry level salary (junior software... MORE
February 2, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
I received a lot of pushback on my earlier post. Comments and email have pointed out that (a) the cost of living really is five times lower in India and (b) Indian expatriates are indeed moving back home to take... MORE
February 1, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
An engineer from India emails me, The purchasing power parity in India is 5 compared to USA - a 20000 $ programmer in India is actually making 100,000 $ in terms of his spending power. ...an average programmer in India... MORE
January 28, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
It's the topic du jour. Here is Dan Pink's story for Wired. A century ago, 40 percent of Americans worked on farms. Today, the farm sector employs about 3 percent of our workforce. But our agriculture economy still outproduces all... MORE
January 22, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Two articles today discuss economic ideas for fine-tuning immigration policy. James Miller writes, The guest worker program should allocate visas to communities and then permit each community to decide how many of their visas to issue. For example, if Northampton,... MORE
January 20, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
That was the title I wanted for this essay on comparative advantage, which pulls together several ideas that I first trotted out on this blog. The essay is lengthy. Here is a short excerpt: To see why trade balance is... MORE
January 13, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Alex Tabarrok has a timely post that links to another Paul Krugman classic on the gulf between economists and noneconomists on the theory of international trade. Krugman writes, it is not obvious to non-economists that wages are endogenous. Someone like... MORE
January 7, 2004
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Charles Schumer and Paul Craig Roberts rewrite Ricardian trade theory. Comparative advantage is undermined if the factors of production can relocate to wherever they are most productive: in today's case, to a relatively few countries with abundant cheap labor. In... MORE
December 19, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen recommends James Buchanan's "The Soul of Classical Liberalism," an essay published three years ago. As Cowen points out, Buchanan is wrestling with tough philosophical issues. Here, I just want to focus on a few sentences that bear on... MORE
December 18, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
One of our comment threads discussed this essay by Kyle Markley that makes the economic case for globalization. All significant economic change creates a disaffected group of people, people whose economic situation is threatened by economic change. Such people bear... MORE
December 10, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Reason's Matt Welch comments on the story that the Bush Administration is going to refuse to allow bids for Iraqi reconstruction work from companies that are located in countries that did not support the coalition. 1) It [costs] the Iraqi... MORE
December 4, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
In this essay, I say that libertarians had a bad month in November. Howard Dean came out in favor of re-regulation of "utilities, large media companies and any business that offers stock options." As Megan McArdle put it, "those of... MORE
December 1, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Samuel Brittan calls for an open immigration policy in the UK. If we favour the free movement of goods, capital and people, between Yorkshire and Lancashire, or between the north and south of England, why should a frontier make a... MORE
November 30, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Business Week runs a long, balanced article on India's economy and its relationship to the United States. For all its R&D labs, India remains visibly Third World. IT service exports employ less than 1% of the workforce. Per-capita income is... MORE
November 21, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Who is setting trade policy in the Bush Administration? Certainly not Bruce Bartlett, who writes, one of the new trade restrictions applies to brassieres. Yet there is no domestic manufacturer of this product... The Bush administration has shown incredibly poor... MORE
November 18, 2003
International Macroeconomics: Exchange Rates, International Debt, etc.
Arnold Kling
I argue that our trade deficit is really a savings deficit. Increasing exports relative to imports is not a matter of beating up on China to live up to its commitments in the World Trade Organization. It is not a... MORE
November 5, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
A reader forwarded a proposal made by Warren Buffet in Fortune. We would achieve this balance by issuing what I will call Import Certificates (ICs) to all U.S. exporters in an amount equal to the dollar value of their exports.... MORE
November 3, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Is the case for free trade weaker when the traded good is high tech labor? Julian Sanchez says no. [Protectionists] might fondly wish that highly educated professionals in Asia would be kind enough to lobotomize themselves and go back to... MORE
October 22, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Joseph Carson of Alliance Capital Management decided to investigate how many manufacturing jobs China has gained at the expense of other countries. The result was somewhat surprising. According to our analysis, between 1995 and 2002 roughly 22 million jobs were... MORE
October 17, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
In this essay, I argue that economists face an uphill battle in dealing with populist beliefs about international trade, entitlements, and consumption versus saving. In my view, international trade is only one aspect of the overall phenomenon of Progress and... MORE
September 9, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
I've always thought of these world trade meetings as being no more significant than the anti-globalization protests that they spawn, but I'll defer to others, who think that they matter. Peter Gallagher owns the issue in the blogosphere (at least... MORE
September 3, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
On Labor Day, President Bush announced that there would be a new Assistant Secretary of Commerce charged with addressing the decline in manufacturing employment. This prompted a number of skeptical responses. Yesterday, Daniel Gross wrote, The new assistant secretary must... MORE
August 20, 2003
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
This week I got some well-deserved pushback on a couple of posts. Peter Gallagher was not impressed with the story of robots and comparative advantage. (Update: Gallagher posted a new comment with a more favorable interpretation of the robot example.)... MORE
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Brad DeLong makes another attempt to explain the economics of outsourcing. Remember: few would be worried about "outsourcing" if the U.S. unemployment rate were still close to four percent, rather than at the above six percent level that it is.... MORE
August 19, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Using the theory of comparative advantage, James Miller explains why robots cannot replace humans completely. Now, assume that in our simple wine/cake world robots begin large-scale manufacturing. They could easily change the relative prices of wine and cake. Perhaps if... MORE
August 17, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
To what extent is the large trade deficit reported for the U.S. a cause for concern? In my Bubbleheads essay a couple months back, I discussed some of the fears about the deficit and the apparently-overvalued dollar. Brad DeLong wonders... MORE
August 1, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
The Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein warns about China, now on the fast track to becoming a dominant player in the global economy and causing major disruptions along the way. Here in the United States, entire industries are being quickly wiped... MORE
July 24, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Peter Gallagher wrote this on his site, but it still counts as a comment. I had asked how one might explain trade and comparative advantage to a journalist. I usually use...the story about the busy lawyer and her secretary. The... MORE
July 22, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
The New York Times has several recent articles on international trade. One piece discusses IBM's evaluation of outsourcing. in recent weeks many politicians in Washington, including some in the Bush administration, have begun voicing concerns about the issue during a... MORE
July 18, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
I try to make the classic case for free trade in an article about outsourcing to India. In fact, a good way to attain clarity in discussing the issue of outsourcing is to substitute the phrase "economic activity" for outsourcing:... MORE
July 7, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
I will be on vacation until July 17, and I presume it will take me a few days to get back to blogging. Meanwhile, TechCentralStation has a couple of articles of mine that they may run while I am away.... MORE
July 2, 2003
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
In the discussion of perspectives on Social Security, I suggested that wages tend to rise with productivity, so that indexing Social Security to wages leads to higher benefits than indexing it to prices. Eric Krieg asked, Arnold, why are wages... MORE
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