Picturing (the Absence of) Diversity at the French National Assembly

Lemonde.fr posted a revealing picture of the current French National Assembly. As I have already argued in several posts, it does not shine by its diversity.

Saving Globalization From Its Effects, Part II

Following up on yesterday’s post, it seems that conservative economists are not the only ones calling for more public intervention to offset the negative distributive effects of globalization. Even liberal economists are now saying that they downplayed these negative effects in the past. In an article published today on VoxEu.org, Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman explains that trade’s impact on income distribution is getting worrisome because of the rise of low-skill labor-abundant China and the fragmentation of production through outsourcing. He concludes by saying: “What all this comes down to is that it’s no longer safe to assert, as we could a dozen years ago, that the effects of trade on income distribution in wealthy countries are fairly minor. There’s now a good case that they are quite big, and getting bigger.”

Nonetheless, Harvard economist Dani Rodrik points out that others disagree. Robert Lawrence, a former co-author of Krugman, argues that trade has even less impact today than a decade ago because the skill premium has stopped rising since 2000.

Whoever is right, what is interesting in this debate is that nobody claims that the solution lies in protectionism. The solutions put forward are about taxation and compensatory social policies rather than closing borders. As Krugman puts it: “This doesn’t mean that I’m endorsing protectionism. It does mean that free-traders need better answers to the anxieties of those who are likely to end up on the losing side from globalisation.” That sounds pretty much like what the conservative economists I mentioned yesterday are saying.