I was at the Peterson Institute recently, hosted by Fred Bergsten at a book-launching event for The Globalization Paradox. The video of my presentation is here, and here is the Powerpoint that goes with it.

My newest Project Syndicate column was stimulated, if that is the right word, by a comment made by a discussant at a recent book launch for The Globalization Paradox. "Rodrik wants to make the world safe for politicians," complained the discussant, and this set me off thinking. Here is the resul...

There is a wonderful scene in Sebastian Mallaby's book that covers Jim Wolfensohn's tenure at the World Bank. Wolfensohn is arriving by cargo plane in Sarajevo in 1996, with his point man for Bosnia, Kemal Dervis. Dervis, who has worked hard to put together a reconstruction program for the war-t...

By Derek Headey, guest blogger Have higher food prices hurt the poor, or helped them? So far everything we "know" about this topic comes from simulation studies, all of which estimate that poverty or hunger went up by somewhere between 63-160 million people as a result of higher food prices ...

This graph is from a new paper by Frank Levy and Tom Kochan, showing trends in labor productivity and compensation since 1980: Labor productivity increased by 78 percent between 1980 and 2009, but the median compensation (including fringe benefits) of 35-44 year-old males with high school (a...

Poor countries have access to new technologies already developed elsewhere so should grow more rapidly than richer economies. This is one of the implications of standard growth models, as well as of common sense. But in reality, there is no automatic tendency for economic "convergence" among co...

This is one that Charles Babbage received in 1821 from The Edinburgh Journal of Science "It is with no inconsiderable degree of reluctance that I decline the offer of any Paper from you. I think, however, you will upon reconsideration of the subject be of opinion that I have no other alternativ...

By Will Martin and Hassan Zaman, guest bloggers We are delighted that Derek Headey has introduced new data and new approaches into the debate on the impacts of higher food prices on food security. But we have difficulty with his claim that the results from Gallup World Poll (GWP) contradict the ...

By Maggie McMillan, guest blogger When economists talk about structural transformation, they typically have in mind developing countries and the dual economy models à la W. Arthur Lewis that emphasize productivity differentials between broad sectors of the economy, such as agriculture and manuf...

Sometimes simple and bold ideas help us see more clearly a complex reality that requires nuanced approaches. I have an "impossibility theorem" for the global economy that is like that. It says that democracy, national sovereignty and global economic integration are mutually incompatible: we can...