For those of you who would rather read my new book in German, it will be out on February 23rd. For more information on it, click here. Translations into Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Greek, Chinese, and British English are also forthcoming.

During the course of research my co-author Maggie McMillan and I were doing on broad patterns of structural change, our research assistant Inigo Verduzco stumbled on an interesting stylized fact that is captured in the figure below. What it shows is that the relative productivity of agricultur...

The honest answer is: “Well, not all that much.” But try saying that in response to the first question that your interlocutor asks you on a radio interview that your publisher’s publicist has arranged for you. You mumble instead something about how despite globalization, we have not all become “...

In an earlier post, I presented some preliminary results on what I called “growth-reducing structural change.” This refers to the highly anomalous and puzzling phenomenon whereby labor moves from high- to low-productivity activities. In joint work with Maggie McMillan (Tufts and IFPRI) we have n...

Another bizarre set of police roundups today in Turkey: eleven people, mostly journalists, were subject to early morning house searches and reportedly issued arrest warrants. Among those caught in the net is Nedim Şener, an award-winning reporter, who has done more than anyone else to shed ligh...

I spoke today at a panel on economic growth after the crisis at a conference organized by the IMF. My co-panelists were George Akerlof, Mike Spence, Andrew Sheng, and Paul Romer. In the audience: Bob Solow, Joe Stiglitz, Olivier Blanchard, and many others. In retrospect, it was probably a mistak...

Developing countries' economies are a mish-mash, combining the productive with the unproductive, the First World with the Third. But why are some developing countries able to shift workers from low-productivity activities to higher-productivity sectors, whereas others have seen labor flowing in ...

Matt Yglesias thinks The Globalization Paradox is “a pretty good book lurking behind a terrible framing device.” Hmmm. I guess that’s better than the other way around. Good to see that some of his readers find the device pretty useful in thinking about what Greece, for instance, is going thro...

This one comes from Bob Kuttner of The American Prospect. [Rodrik’s] new book, The Globalization Paradox, is simply the best recent treatment of the globalization dilemma that I've read, by an economist or anyone else. The paradox of his title is the fact that markets need states, but states ar...

At last week's IMF conference, Vivian Davies of VoxEU.org recorded an interview with me on my recent work on "growth-reducing structural change" and other matters. You can listen to it here. I spent this week in London and Warwick, giving a talk at LSE among other places. I was stunned -- that ...

There! I said it, and I feel better already. I have waited a really long time to do this, and I am happy that Bill Kristol finally gave me an opportunity with his column in today's New York Times. More on what he wrote below, but first let me explain why I take great pleasure in pointing out hi...