Today, we’re fortunate to have Willem Thorbecke , Senior Fellow at Japan’s Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI) as a guest contributor. The…

Seeing Is Believing -- We don’t know yet what’s in the TPP. But knowing some things that aren’t in it—currency manipulation rules, notably—should make us nervous. A response to Michael Froman. -- Jared Bernstein

The EIF was one of the most powerful and enduring organizations in history. "Between Monopoly and Free Trade" locates the source of that success in the innovative policy by which the Court of Directors granted employees the right to pursue their own commercial interests while in the firm’s employ. Exploring trade network dynamics, decision-making processes, and ports and organizational context, Emily Erikson demonstrates why the EIC was a dominant force in the expansion of trade between Europe and Asia, and she sheds light on the related problems of why England experienced rapid economic development and how the relationship between Europe and Asia shifted in the 18thC and 19thC.(..) Building on the organizational infrastructure of the Company and the sophisticated commercial institutions of the markets of the East, employees constructed a cohesive internal network of peer communications that directed English trading ships during their voyages. This network integrated Company operations, encouraged innovation, and increased the Company’s flexibility, adaptability, and responsiveness to local circumstance. -- assistant professor in the department of sociology and the school of management (by courtesy) at Yale University, as well as a member of the Council of South Asian Studies. -- excerpt Chapter 1 downloaded pdf to Note

"Regional Integration in South Asia: Trends, Challenges and Prospects" presents an objective assessment of trade and economic co-operation among South Asian nations and highlights policy issues to foster regional integration. The analyses presented in this volume go beyond the usual discussions on trade-in-goods to provide insightful perspectives on potential new areas of co-operation, emerging challenges, and country-specific views on regional and bilateral trade co-operation issues. Written by influential analysts and researchers, the volume’s 24 chapters include perspectives from Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and examinations of new areas of co-operation such as investment, regional supply chains, energy and cross-border transport networks. -- From overview chapter, looks like they pour cold water on launching another in a long series of splashy but ineffective regional initiatives. They expect few major benefits from focusing on tariffs and official non-tariff trade barriers or a preferential regional bloc. The region simply is poorly integrated by infrastructure, movements of people and ideas, and business relations. Much is due to the costs of adequate over land transport given the topography, which exacerbated by the political tensions that are barriers to devoting significant scarce resources to building cross-border linkages. But even ports have been developed with an eye to global rather than regional trade. Can be read online - or download for $

Trying to think through global economy prices effects and climate issues are daunting

This paper provides a survey of the literature on trade theory, from the classical example of comparative advantage to the New Trade theories currently used by many advanced countries to direct industrial policy and trade. An account is provided of the neo-classical brand of reciprocal demand and resource endowment theories, along with their usual empirical verifications and logical critiques. A useful supplement is provided in terms of Staffan Linder’s theory of “overlapping demand,” which provides an explanation of trade structure in terms of aggregate demand. Attention is drawn to new developments in trade theory, with strategic trade providing inputs to industrial policy. Issues relating to trade, growth, and development are dealt with separately, supplemented by an account of the neo-Marxist versions of trade and underdevelopment. -- Associated Program: The State of the US and World Economies -- Related Topic(s):Comparative costs New theories of trade Overlapping demand Resource pattern and trade Strategic trade Trade and development -- downloaded pdf to Note

Chart of distribution of manufacturing capacity over the centuries pre and post Industrial Revolution from Robert Allen -- Note that the West, narrowly defined as England the rest of Western Europe, what was to become the US and Russia (called for the whole period USSR) had a share of less than 20% in 1750, it had expanded to more than 80% on the eve of WW-I. If you add Australia, Canada and Latin America (which are all in Rest of the World, but are what Maddison would call Western offshoots), the numbers are even larger. Most of the changes were associated to the squeeze of China. And most of the recent changes are associated with expansion of China and East Asia (which includes Japan). We have not gone full circle, by the way. In other words, the process of development (or indutrialization in the center) went hand in hand with the process of underdevelopment (deindustrialization) in the periphery, and old lesson from a little book by Osvaldo Sunkel which is still worth reading. [1972 study of Latin American development and underdevelopment from 1750, tracking exports, FDI etc]

The economic bleeding due to increasing offshoring has stopped. The rate of new reshoring is now equal to the rate of new offshoring. The challenge is now to reshore the 3 to 4 million manufacturing jobs that are still offshored. Recent reshoring announcements and successes by Apple, Caterpillar and GE and analysis of the economics of reshoring suggest that we could raise the net reshoring rate from the current zero jobs/year to 50,000. For the U.S. to achieve its full reshoring potential requires a continuation of offshore cost trends, improvement in U.S. competitiveness and changes in companies’ sourcing decision metrics. The U.S. government can influence all of these factors with minimal expenditure -- most recommendations for Dept of Commerce, especially integrating their reshoring tools and materials in their programs - also some Dept of Education extending encouragement of community college training initiatives - extend use of tool for calculating full costs of off-shoring as e.g. condition of federal contracts -- big issue currency manipulation by e.g. China at end of list is different in kind from the sorts of reorientation or extension of government programs or public-private_partnerships

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) works with small and medium-sized manufacturers to help them create and retain jobs, increase profits, and save time and money. The nationwide network provides a variety of services, from innovation strategies to process improvements to green manufacturing. MEP also works with partners at the state and federal levels on programs that put manufacturers in position to develop new customers, expand into new markets and create new products. As a program of the Dept of Commerce, MEP is a nationwide network of more than 1,200 technical experts, - located in every state - serving as trusted business advisors, focused on transforming U.S. manufacturers to compete globally, support supply chain integration, and provide access to technology for improved productivity. MEP is built around manufacturing extension centers locally positioned throughout 50 states and Puerto Rico. MEP Centers are a diverse network of state, university-based, and non-profit organizations, offering products and services that address the critical needs of their local manufacturers. Each center works directly with area manufacturers to provide expertise and services tailored to their most critical needs, ranging from process improvement and workforce development to business practices and technology transfer. Additionally centers connect manufacturers with government and trade associations, universities and research laboratories, and a host of other public and private resources to help them realize individual goals.

WILLIAM A. PETTIGREW - University of Kent and GEORGE W. VAN CLEVE - Seattle University School of Law --This article revisits the late seventeenth-century histories of two of England's most successful overseas trading monopolies, the East India and Royal African Companies. It offers the first full account of the various enforcement powers and strategies that both companies developed and stresses their unity of purpose in the seventeenth century. It assesses the complex effects that the ‘Glorious Revolution’ had on these powers and strategies, unearthing much new material about the case law for monopoly enforcement in this critical period and revising existing accounts that continue to assert the Revolution's exclusively deregulating effects and that miss crucial subtleties in the case law and related alterations in company behaviour. It asks why the two companies parted company as legal and political entities and offers an explanation that connects the fortunes of both monopoly companies to their public profile and differing constituencies in the English empire and the varying non-European political contexts in which they operated. -- * We warmly thank Michael R. T. Macnair for his indispensable advice and assistance regarding matters of seventeenth-century English law and are grateful to Clive Holmes for encouraging us to look into these issues and to Simon Douglas and Jeffrey Hackney for initial help in doing so. Paul Halliday, Daniel Hulsebosch, and Philip J. Stern provided helpful responses to specific research queries.

A long-standing truism in California’s Silicon Valley is that “70 percent of hardware is software”—early recognition of the link between sales of computers and software services. It is a phenomenon that now extends beyond the computer industry. Services have become the glue that binds many manufacturing supply chains. ...Recognizing this interdependence, companies are shifting from “selling products to selling an integrated combination of products and services that deliver value,” a development that the academic literature refers to as the “servitization of manufacturing” .... Companies are more open today to the incorporation of products and services from other vendors if it helps them establish and maintain a relationship with their customers. To reap the benefits of these trends, even developing economies where manufacturing still looms large must develop state-of-the-art services. Such services are needed for manufacturing firms to connect to global value chains and develop competitiveness in more skill-intensive activities along the value chain. Some countries may be able to use their comparative advantage in labor costs to become exporters of some intermediate or final service products. In others, services may pose lower barriers to entry than capital-intensive industries or offer an easier route to employment for women than other available options. Countries such as Malaysia could take advantage of the globalization of services to escape a potential middle-income trap.