I teach what is, for me, a new course this semester together with Roberto Mangabeira Unger of the Law School, called “Political Economy After the Crisis.” Roberto and I end up arguing quite a bit, with plenty of contributions from the students. For those of you who are interested, here is the s...

It will be a watershed year, ushering a new world economic order--with the disorder most likely coming first. I just don't have the foggiest idea what this new order will look like. It will be a time when we will all have to change our tune and have to think out of the box. I for one will worr...

I am in Ethiopia, and it is good to see how much the environment for private economic activity has improved since my last visit a few years back. The economy has been booming since 2003, growing at Chinese rates. But there are ominous signs that the good times will be interrupted by an old-fas...

Paul Krugman frets that we are about to witness the mother of all currency crises in emerging markets, and I am afraid that he is right. As I wrote in my previous post, the financial crisis in the developing world has just started and there are indications that it will get a lot, a lot worse. W...

[Note: This piece first appeared in Paul Krugman's blog.] In what is probably the country’s most important court case in at least five decades, hundreds of Turkish military officers are in jail and on trial for allegedly having plotted to overthrow the then newly-elected Justice and Development ...

Here is a video of my keynote address at Mt. Holyoke College: 2012 Global Conference Keynote Speaker Dani Rodrik from MHC MCGI on Vimeo.

Daniel Drezner has some nice things to say about me and my blog, but then takes me to task for understating the gains from free trade in a recent entry. He writes: In focusing strictly on the employment effects, however, Rodrik elides the biggest gain from trade -- lower prices. Since Drezner’...

Imagine you are the leader of a regional power, basking in the glow of global attention to your political and economic success. You have managed to consolidate your power by outmaneuvering your opponents, most critically the military with its habit of pushing out governments not of its liking. ...

I spent a few short days in Latvia last week. My meetings centered on industrial policy, which Latvia is serious about – quite interestingly for a country that is often viewed as a hotbed of conservative economics. But my time there also gave me an opportunity to reflect on the country’s much di...

For a lot of questions, comparisons of per-capita GDP yield the correct answer to a first-order of approximation. For example, are Americans richer than the Chinese? A comparison of GDPs per capita, adjusted for PPP differences, yields an unambiguous answer in favor of the U.S. Yes, income may...