There was a time when economists believed that institutional reform--improving governance--was a key ingredient in improving living standards in the developing world. "Good governance" is surely a good thing in its own right. But a lot of recent academic and policy research has focused of late...

A long-standing debate between libertarians and others concerns the extent to which a state is needed to enforce cooperative rules. Many libertarians argue that informal, self-sustaining agreements can achieve desirable outcomes even without the state acting as a third-party enforcer. See here f...

Andy Berg writes to tell me about a new IMF policy note on fiscal policy responses to the current crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa and the big news is that the IMF now thinks there is a role for increasing fiscal deficits even in some of the word's poorest countries. As Andy puts it, About 2/3 of...

I have updated the page with links to Growth Diagnostics exercises that I know of. There is also a volume of Latin American GD case studies that should be coming out from the Inter-American Development Bank next month or so. I am sure that there are others that I am missing, so if you know of...

by Asim Khwaja, guest blogger The post-9/11 emphasis on Pakistan continues to portray madrassas (religious schools) as a focal point – their rising prevalence the subject of great concern. What is surprising is that this “myth” persists despite evidence to the contrary – that madrassas are in fa...

My latest Project Syndicate piece argues that the world economy has handled the financial shock rather well so far, but that the real test for globalization is yet to come. History teaches that global economic order is difficult to establish and maintain in the absence of a dominant economic ...

Well at least a couple of them. I gave a talk with this name at LSE the other day, which was extremely well attended. I am not happy with the title at all, which as I joked, makes me sound like a Tom Friedman wannabe. But it does capture a couple of key ideas I was trying to get across: the m...

This appreciation by Dixit on Samuelson should not be missed.

There are a few things that suddenly ignite my urge to blog again. This piece a couple of days ago by Dominique Strauss-Kahn urging nations to coordinate their approaches to financial regulation almost did it. Here is a little excerpt: Imagine a financial holding company that owns a commercia...

When you write a book there is always the hope somewhere in the background that you will be able to sway minds by the power of your arguments and evidence. In saner moments, you admit to yourself that most minds are already firmly made up and you will be preaching to the converted for the most p...

The finance ministers of the world's richest countries want to set up rules to govern the investments of sovereign wealth funds from developing and emerging nations. I wonder if they also intend to apply the rules retroactively to entities such as these.

The answer is no, if you can answer the following questions (drawn from my list of study questions for monday's midterm exam): 1. Discuss why different countries may end up having different levels of openness (measured by shares of trade in GDP) even if they follow free-trade policies. 2. The g...

I think I know why "economists" write books like this and this: they sell! But I don't understand why anyone reads them.

Editor A: Doesn't this Krugman guy get on your nerves, always on his high horse about how Republicans and non-economists get their facts and arguments wrong? Editor B: Yeah, it was a great idea to have his book reviewed by a historian. I love the way Kennedy says Krugman gets his history wrong. ...

Our Center for International Development is playing host over the next couple of days to this year's Northeast Universities Development Consortium Conference--an annual conference on development economics. Looking at the variety of sessions and papers being presented, I am once again struck by ...

Do you want to understand how globalization reshapes wealth and opportunity in the world? Look no further than soccer--the sport that everyone in the world (besides the U.S.) calls football. I know, this is not an original idea. There is at least one best seller on the topic, but while it is a r...

This time it's off to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I will be giving a talk at the dedication of the University's Cline Center for Democracy. The Cline Center has a major research project called the Societal Infrastructures and Development (SID) project. It is a very amb...

by Ricardo Hausmann, guest columnist We are all so affected by bad news on so many fronts – rising global inequality, a looming economic crisis, a warming planet, etc. – that we seldom take the time to savor the good news when they happen. According to the latest gender related statistics publis...

is being led by Peter Nardulli at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As I mentioned in an earlier post, it involves the digitization, classification, and coding of 30 million plus news reports from all over the world going back to 1946. Called Event Analysis, the project will great...

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...

Many moons ago, I wrote a paper (with Alberto Alesina) called “Distributive Politics and Economic Growth,” which remains one of my most heavily cited publications. The paper has a simple idea: in highly unequal societies, the median voter is more likely to demand high taxes on capital, which in...

This paper of mine on the Turkish economy was completed more than a year ago but has just been published in the new journal of the Turkish Economic Association. Re-reading it, I feel it captures well the missed opportunities of the last few years. Unwillingness to use fiscal policy in a counterc...

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...

[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.