Do economists ever recommend more regulation?

Isn't it a bit like Marxists recommending full control of production be given to the proleteriat?

The report seems to indicate that according the OECD's GTAP model there would be increases in GDP etc. The question is how accurate is the GTAP model and was it constructed in order to show the things that economists wanted to say?

It's almost sad that Marxism has been so thoroughly discredited. If it were still around we could also have Marxists creating computer models that, amazingly enough, fully agreed with their theorems.

The trouble with increased GDP per capita is that it is an average, and as we know from recent experience
the distribution of the benefits is not very even.

In fact, it appears to the casual observer the distribution is more skewed than is has been in a long time.

Which, of course, implies that some, or a majority, or even a large majority of the population could lose income.

1) As Thorstein Veblen would have recognized, the academic advocates of globalization
use the techniques of medieval priesthood -- arguments based not on facts but on
manipulation of a complex theory which only the officially anointed are qualified to discuss
-- which is convenient because the unwashed might point out how the theory has
little basis in reality.

2) Why doesn't Dan discuss the salient FACTS about globalization? Such as the fact
that the profits are flowing to the few while the enormous costs of defending foreign
investments --costs borne in blood as well as money -- are dumped off onto US workers.

3) The US is separated from the rest of the world by two large oceans. With a population of
290 million owning 200 million firearms, we could defend the US mainland if the Department of
Defense was scrapped overnight. So why does the US taxpayer have to shell out over $400
billion/YEAR -- more than the next 25 largest military powers COMBINED? Especially since
most of those other powers are our allies? Answer: To protect the foreign investments of the
wealthy from nationalization and to twist the arms of foreign rulers.

4) Why does Dan never discuss the enormous COSTS of globalization? Bush is using the "war on
terror" to deploy US forces to Central Asia in order to take the huge Caspian Sea oil deposits
away from Russia and Iran. The profits from Caspian oil --and Iraqi oil -- will flow to a few while
blue collar US families only receive dead sons in coffins and have $Trillions stolen from their
Social Security/Medicare Trust Funds to defend and advance globalization. Why does
Dan think that the huge subsidy of the US Defense budget -- without which globalization would collapse -- is not worthy of discussion?

5) Bush's tax cut for the rich --funded by stealing $Trillions from middle class
America's Social Security Trust Fund --
created jobs in China, not in the US. From 2001 to 2004, US Direct Investment Abroad increased by $102.8 Billion/YEAR. By contrast, US Fixed Investment,NonResidential (i.e., business investment in the USA) increased by only $52.7 Billion/YEAR.

Note that roughly $1 Trillion has to be invested EVERY YEAR in US plant just to keep our current level of employment
--due to the rapid depreciation of modern manufacturing (five year useable life of computer systems today
vice the 30 plus year life cycle of steel mills and railroads 100 years
ago.) The diversion of needed capital abroad is why the ranks of permanently US unemployed have soared and number in millions. Why does Dan not consider this worthy of discussion?

6) Dan's defense of globalization involves a lot of theory -- in the sense that medieval priests
used "logic" to prove how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. Galileo cut through this
bullshit by arguing that one should look at the FACTS shown by observation of the real world
--and by measurement. That is SCIENCE. That is why the name of Mr Drezner's discipline --
"Political Science" -- is so hysterically funny in this context.

Daniel Drezner has scoffed in the past at the loss of computer jobs due to outsourcing. See, e.g., his article in Foreign Affairs.

But if Dan looked at the real world , he would have seen what I noted over a week ago:

Dell Computer's 10-K annual reports shows that Dell had 23,500 US employees in 2000 and 13,000 foreign employees.

Five years later, on March 2005, Dell US employees had only increased by 1,100 to 24,600.

By contrast, Dell foreign employment increased by 27,600 employees!! to 30,600.

(Note that Dell's US employment actually dropped below the 2000 level in intervening years due to large layoffs).
Ref: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/sec?s=DELL , select 10-K reports for 2000 and 2005 ,and search for"employees"

7) Although I think Dan is palming a few cards, I have to agree that he is only one of many advocates for globalization found in academia and on Wall Street. When I wonder why the debate on globalization is so dishonest, I can only conclude that it's because the wealthy who profit from globalization also hand out high paying jobs, lucrative consulting contracts, and lavish grants. By contrast, the "national interest" and the common citizen can hand out nothing to the chattering classes. That's why academicans feel no sympathy for the blue collar workers who fight this country's wars and whose hard work and sacrifice has created this country's wealth and freedom.

8) In 1776, historian Edward Gibbon noted the enormous misery and poverty that mankind has endured for two millenia. He notes that priests could have prevented this by using their influence to advocate for fair treatment of the common citizen. He notes, however, that history shows the priesthood has always been on the side of the powerful and wealthy.

Priests support the powerful because the powerful ensure that priests do not have to work for a living.
That's the real "political science".

Don's post reminds me very strongly of creationist posts on talk.origins and elsewhere. A great many elements are common to the two.

I sure as hell hope that "Don the Lesser" never posts comments on this blog...

At any rate, the articles Dan summarizes seem quite convincing. I still think, though, that we are not doing enough as a country to help the displaced workers. I still think there is not enough respect paid to the sense of self-worth individuals get from "good" jobs, and to the importance of this self-worth in republican government and citizenship. Cost-benefit analyses that deal with dollars only don't take into account every cost and benefit.

It never ceases to amaze me how protectionists ignore the benefits to everyone of lower prices (i.e. higher real incomes) due to more sources of supply. These are widely distributed, populist gains from trade that account for the majority of the benefits found in the various economic studies. So even using the overly narrow, static distributional calculus urged by the critics of free trade, vast numbers of average citizens get immediate and significant benefit from the existence of foreign competition.

As for self-respect and citizenship, how is it more respectable to force people to do business with you when they would rather get a better deal elsewhere? How can it be a fulfillment of good citizenship to coerce one's neighbors not to use their best judgment in choosing from whom to buy? Perhaps the mafia's linen services to restaurants provide lots of self-respect for the mobsters strong-arming their "customers," but it seems a poor model of citizenship for the rest of us.

Lower prices are great --- if you have a job, or have a job that pays a decent wage.

In states with manufacturing losses, wages and benefits are plummeting, as workers take whatever service and retail jobs they can get. REal wages and real income trail.

This of course has a ripple effect, lower tax collections, stagnant housing prices, lower retail sales, which leads to wage stagnation, ..... and we now have quite a vicious cycle.

It seems, in a simplistic sort of way, that federal policies over two decades largely benefit those states that "touch an ocean," to the detriment of the heartland. California is hiring longshoremen at high wages, laid off manufacturing workers are going to work at big box stores.

I guess I must be 'Don the Lesser'. ;)

Speaking to Dan's actual point, I think there are two or maybe three things going on here.

1) I don't doubt that the study is accurate. Liberalisation really does raise average incomes.

2) What possibly doesn't appear in the study is that it also increases risks. The risk that large groups will be made unemployable or be forced to take major pay cuts (50% or more) very swiftly seems to accompany liberalisation. Factory workers in heavy industry are a perfect example and my fellow IT workers seem to be another.

Another effect which seems to elude many economists is a drop in status. This has been extremely visible in the IT industry over the past 5 years. This was a high-status occupation but is no longer.

The signals the market sent IT workers seem in retrospect to have been extremely misleading - and I submit that is the problem. Many intelligent people made and make large investments in time and money acquiring skills which the market seems to value - then the globalisation 'wind-shear' hits and returns on these investments drops to low or even negative levels.

3) I wonder whether it's possible to put the cat in the bag - to return Western IT and other knowledge workers to the high status and pay they once enjoyed by removing things like the H1B visa program. Or whether natural market forces will return some of the lost ground more naturally. I don't think H1B is the fundamental problem, so I doubt that getting rid of the program will help. I think better enforcement of the rules could help - because it's obviously being abused.

On the 'natural recovery' argument I don't know. Some days I'm optimistic - today I am not.

One more point, I guess. When I look at countries like France and Germany who apparently try to insulate workers from the market forces of liberalisation Isee two things:

1) It really does work for those who have good jobs. They are significantly more secure than I am - though their pay is lower.

2) But I also see high levels of unemployment and anger among their young people, minority groups, and older factory workers. So I think these countries pay also. They have merely succeeded in displacing the impact of the global liberalisation within the labor force - not in avoiding it altogether.

3) As long as liberalisation is going to happen anyway a country may as well enjoy the benefits as well as the hardships. I think France and Germany are getting the bad without enjoying the good. That seems wrong-headed to me....

All investiments, including those in human capital, are (and should be) hostages to fortune, if we are not to straitjacket our fellow citizens in their search for the best trades they can get. Shoemakers were devastated by factory automation; watchmakers have been hurt by digital technology; paste-up artists went extinct due to desktop publishing; primary steelworkers were outcompeted by minimills in all but the highest-quality product lines; travel agents have been pounded by the internet. The list is endless. Change in what people do for a living, the rise and fall of various forms of specialization, is not a bug in the system--it is the essence of economic progress.

Occasionally, a line of work (or an industry) hits a "sweet spot" where it can expand its operations for a number of years without significantly changing them. In such cases, the illusion that growth without change is possible may flourish. But these situations rarely persist for long without coercive regulation against, newer, better, and/or cheaper ways of doing things.

DonS is correct that regulations aimed at stabilizing the division of labor lead to various forms of stagnation and push the costs of that stagnation onto marginal groups. Asser Lindbeck, a Swedish economist, has written about the "insider-outsider" structure of European economies under social democracy. Those who have jobs are protected insiders, while those on the outside have limited career prospects. In return for this divisive distributional policy, they also get a lower average standard of living over time, a classic lose-lose solution.

I'd reply that what's for the goose is sauce for the gander. If being naked to global market forces (and forced to compete with workers making 20% of what I do) is good for me - and that is the classical case being made....

Let's consider academic tenure. It's pretty well established that tenured faculty are on-average less productive than untenured faculty. Particularly in undergraduate teaching. Correct?

So why tenure? Why is tenure for academic economists a good thing - therefore competition a bad thing - for academic economists? Perhaps they deserve a chance to kick back and relax a little.

But then why don't I get that chance also? I've been a superior programmer for 22 years. But when I reached tenure age I was pitched straight into a battle for my career. 'Too Old' they said. Well I'm not - I've just proven it where I work now. And I'll have to keep proving it every damned day until I retire, die, or get shipped to the fool farm.

Professor Drezner won't. Where is the justice in that? Professor, I challenge you to live by the principles you espouse. Turn down that tenure offer!

A radical proposal - Deregulate the University. Many if not most faculty holding the PhD are abysmal teachers - so why not thow open the ranks of the professorate to truly talented teachers - without the PhD?

You could argue that universities already do that for their lecturers - the ranks of the ABD's. But the path to the top isn't open to these people - many of them talented teachers. No, they are the sweated labor of the University monosony! You must hold the PhD and acquire tenure to progress.

Why is that so? Why not offer tenure and top jobs to great teachers who don't hold the PhD?

What you have is the Medieval Guild system applied to the modern university - it makes no sense. And how academics can argue that this oligopoly is a good thing - but deny all other profession #from setting up their own oligopolies - is completely beyond understanding!

Anyone care to explain this to us?

The OECD is a nice study all right. Problem is that it's a house of cards. It produces a nice result because, well, the assumptions underlying the abstract analysis are designed such that they can't produce a bad result. It's a neat little game. People like Dan don't question the results, because, well, it confirms prior beliefs. Such is the free trade pathology.

Adam: I hope your reading comprehension improves in graduate school, since the critique you link to does not address the OECD paper (indeed, the latter doesn't even cite the Brown, Deardorff and Stern paper).

Furthermore, I hope your graduate training improves your knowledge of trade theory; your blog post critques the static model of comparative advantage and overlooks a fair amount of not-so-recent research (by Paul Romer among others) about the dynamic benefits of trade liberalization.

Dan: I don't get to "See Spot Run" until next semester, but until then...

I wrote: "those who observe that trading entails more competition in the market argue that trading yields dynamic gains as well, inducing producers to up productivity. But here the evidence is unclear which way causation runs: does trading cause firms to be more productive or is it that more productive firms tend to trade?"

Coincidentally, I wrote this before I read your post or the OECD report.

You quote the OECD: "many would argue that liberalisation produces “dynamic gains”, that is more open product markets stimulate research, innovation and technical progress on a sustained basis."

In re the citation of Peter Dorman: You're right. The OECD study does not cite BDS (though they both use the same GTAP data). But that's not the point. Dorman provides a broader critique of using general equilibrium models to estimate welfare gains from trade: a comparative static equilibrium analysis. And of course underlying this is a host of unrealistic assumptions about how the world works. Of course there are people who try to make the general equilibrium tool more realistic by incorporating unemployment, underutilization of productive capacity, etc., but they tend to work at UNCTAD rather than the OECD.

As for the estimates of dynamic effects of trade liberalization, here's how one World Bank modeler explained it to me recently (I'm paraphrasing): "Basically, do you want to multiply it by two, three, or four?"

With or without a dynamic effect, all of these models are lacking a cucial element that should be obvious to a Chicagoan: optimizing micro-agents.

I'm not saying that trade is bad or good. I'm just saying we should be circumspect about proclaimed measurements of the benefits of trade.

Spin Better!!!