The Turkish court that sentenced more than 300 officers on coup plotting charges in September apparently thinks so. The Turkish military has long set the ground rules for Turkish politics, and this was hailed as a landmark trial. Many saw it as the centerpiece of a democratic, mildly Islamist gov...

The European Union, and the Eurozone in particular, has impressive institutional achievements to its name. We have a European Parliament, European Commission, European Court of Justice, a set of common regulations that exceeded 100,000 last time I checked (acquis communautaire), and of course t...

As if the economic ramifications of a full-blown Greek default were not terrifying enough, the political consequences could be far worse. A chaotic eurozone breakup would cause irreparable damage to the European integration project, the central pillar of Europe’s political stability since World ...

Pity the mafia that is staging what is probably the most significant political trial in modern Turkey’s history – a show trial in which more than three hundred Turkish military officers stand accused of plotting a military coup back in 2003. Since early 2010, the mafia has produced three differ...

There is an important difference between domestic economic policies that create benefits by imposing costs on other nations ("beggar-thy-neighbor policies") and those whose economic costs are borne primarily at home though they might affect others as well ("beggar-thyself policies"). Beggar-thy-...

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...

I have blogged before about a rather surprising result (to me at least) regarding productivity convergence in manufacturing. Despite the lack of convergence among economies as a whole, there is apparently quite strong convergence within manufacturing industries. What this means is that manufac...

[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.

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. ...

To understand what is happening in Turkey’s murky world of judicial politics these days, it helps to imagine you are watching the closing scenes of a Hollywood courtroom drama. The movie’s protagonist stands accused of attempted murder. The prosecutor has produced a set of elaborate plans that t...

This has been a long-standing concern of mine: what are the respective roles of ideas iand interests in shaping policy outcomes? The most widely held theory of politics is also the simplest: the powerful get what they want. Financial regulation is driven by the interests of banks, health policy ...

Look at the chart below, and you will go a good way towards understanding why the problem with Greece has been allowed to get worse and worse (the proverbial “kicking the can down the road”) to the point where it may have become too late. The chart shows the IMF’s growth projections for Greece...

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...

Guest Post by Danny Leipziger,Professor of International Business at George Washington University, and former Vice President for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management at the World Bank A new president will take over the World Bank on July 1st. Dr. Jim Kim inherits a venerable institution tha...

My colleague Lant Pritchett teaches a course on globalization with Larry Summers, and he invited me to his class recently to debate Summers on free trade. I used a few thought experiments to get students to understand how thinking about trade policy requires going beyond economics to considering...