Re: Re: Re: Re: Keeping focus after the WTO

[Brad De Long <delong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> - free trade (as opposed to more limited trade) is irrelevant except
> (sometimes) to squeeze the optimal out of the status quo - and has
> very small gains even then (Krugman called it economics' dirty little
> secret didn't he?)


Krugman and Rodrik are on that side of the argument. A whole bunch of
other people are on the other side. (I tend to lean toward the
anti-Kruman-Rodrik side: without trade how can you buy the capital
goods from the industrial core that embody so much of technology?
without trade who in the industrial core will get excited about
teaching you how to raise your technology level?

Brad DeLong


-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"Now 'in the long run' this [way of summarizing the quantity theory
of money] is probably true.... But this long run is a misleading
guide to current affairs. **In the long run** we are all dead.
Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in
tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long
past the ocean is flat again."

--J.M. Keynes
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
J. Bradford De Long; Professor of Economics, U.C. Berkeley;
Co-Editor, Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Dept. of Economics, U.C. Berkeley, #3880
Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
(510) 643-4027; (925) 283-2709 phones
(510) 642-6615; (925) 283-3897 faxes
http://econ161.berkeley.edu/
<delong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>