ECONOMICS OF DEVELOPMENT

Roads to Prosperity

Dani Rodrik

Is free trade always the best policy? Should developing countries open their financial systems? Do foreign-exchange controls serve any useful purpose in our globalized world?

RECENT COMMENTARIES

FEATURED COMMENTARIES

Leaderless Global Governance

Dani Rodrik Series: Roads to Prosperity

2012-01-13

Too much global political capital nowadays is wasted on harmonizing policies that don't need it, and not enough is spent on harmonizing those that do. Over-ambitious and misdirected efforts at global governance will not serve us well at a time when global leadership and cooperation are bound to remain in limited supply.... read

Comments: 6 Recommended: 0 Read: 17988

Occupy the Classroom?

Dani Rodrik Series: Roads to Prosperity

2011-12-12

Early last month, a group of students staged a walkout in Harvard’s popular introductory economics course. The problem is that, while economists know that they must carefully hedge their assertions when talking to each other, they feel no such compunction when addressing the public – or newcomers to the discipline.... read

Comments: 22 Recommended: 3 Read: 49350

Turkey’s Democratic Dusk

Dani Rodrik Series: Roads to Prosperity

2011-11-22

Under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s rule, Turkey has emerged as a regional power. But, whereas the country was once a beacon of democracy in a region accustomed to autocrats, it now looks like it is heading towards authoritarianism at home and adventurism abroad.... read

Comments: 5 Recommended: 0 Read: 19251

Europe’s Next Nightmare

Dani Rodrik Series: Roads to Prosperity

2011-11-09

The economic ramifications of a full-blown Greek default are terrifying, but the political consequences could be far worse. A chaotic eurozone breakup would destabilize not only the highly-indebted European periphery, but also core countries like France and Germany.... read

Comments: 1 Recommended: 1 Read: 34861

Milton Friedman’s Magical Thinking

Dani Rodrik Series: Roads to Prosperity

2011-10-11

Free-market enthusiasts’ place in the history of economic thought will remain secure. But thinkers like Milton Friedman leave an ambiguous and puzzling legacy, because it is the interventionists who have succeeded in economic history, where it really matters.... read

Comments: 46 Recommended: 3 Read: 56593

The Crisis of Fiscal Imagination

Dani Rodrik Series: Roads to Prosperity

2011-09-12

Greedy banks, bad economic ideas, incompetent politicians: there is no shortage of culprits for the economic crisis in which rich countries are engulfed. But when future generations place our leaders in historical perspective, they will most likely reproach them, above all, for their lack of institutional imagination.... read

Comments: 10 Recommended: 1 Read: 25675

The Manufacturing Imperative

Dani Rodrik Series: Roads to Prosperity

2011-08-10

We may live in a post-industrial age, in which information technologies, biotech, and high-value services have become drivers of economic growth. But countries ignore the health of their manufacturing industries at their peril.... read

Comments: 22 Recommended: 2 Read: 25249

The Future of Economic Growth

Dani Rodrik Series: Roads to Prosperity

2011-07-25

Greater convergence in the post-crisis global economy – a narrowing of the income gap between rich and poor countries – appears inevitable. But a large reversal in these countries' fortunes seems neither economically likely, nor politically feasible.... read

Comments: 5 Recommended: 1 Read: 34148

Turkey on Trial

Dani Rodrik Series: Roads to Prosperity

2011-07-21

In a Hollywood courtroom drama, you know that the hero, set up by the bad guys, will eventually be cleared – but not before the noose tightens around his neck. If Turkey’s ongoing political-military trials ever find their way to the screen, there will be no shortage of such denouements.... read

Comments: 3 Recommended: 2 Read: 13240

Will Greece Make It?	Dani Rodrik
Greece has bought some time with a new package of financial support, but it remains to be seen whether the Greek government's promise of souped-up austerity policies will be politically acceptable and sustainable. History suggests some grounds for skepticism.... read

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Development in Reverse

Dani Rodrik Series: Roads to Prosperity

2011-03-10

Developing countries' economies are a mish-mash, combining the productive with the unproductive, the First World with the Third. But why are some developing countries able to shift workers from low-productivity activities to higher-productivity sectors, whereas others have seen labor flowing in the opposite direction?... read

Comments: 2 Recommended: 1 Read: 22587

Blame the Economists, Not Economics

Dani Rodrik Series: Roads to Prosperity

2009-03-11

As the world economy tumbles off the edge of a precipice, critics of the economics profession are raising questions about its complicity in the current crisis. Rightly so: economists have plenty to answer for.... read

Comments: 1 Recommended: 0 Read: 42005

Milton Friedman’s Magical Thinking

Dani Rodrik Series: Roads to Prosperity

2011-10-11

Comments: 46 Recommended: 3 Read: 56593

The Return of Industrial Policy

Dani Rodrik Series: Roads to Prosperity

2010-04-12

Industrial policy is back, openly embraced by governments in countries like Britain and France, and by prestigious organizations like the Word Bank and McKinsey. The standard rap against industrial policy – that governments cannot pick winners – is largely irrelevant: what determines success in industrial policy is the much less demanding capacity to let losers go.... read

Comments: 9 Recommended: 2 Read: 51585

The Poverty of Dictatorship

Dani Rodrik Series: Roads to Prosperity

2011-02-09

If Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali or Egypt's Hosni Mubarak were hoping for political popularity as a reward for economic gains, they must have been sorely disappointed. Their people have just sent a sobering message to China and other authoritarian regimes around the world: don’t count on economic progress to keep you in power forever.... read

Comments: 11 Recommended: 1 Read: 49561

Occupy the Classroom?

Dani Rodrik Series: Roads to Prosperity

2011-12-12

Comments: 22 Recommended: 3 Read: 49350

The Death of the Globalization Consensus

Dani Rodrik Series: Roads to Prosperity

2008-07-11

There was a time when world leaders could comfort themselves with the thought that opposition to globalization consisted of violent anarchists, self-serving protectionists, trade unionists, and ignorant, if idealistic youth. But what makes news nowadays is the growing list of mainstream economists who are questioning globalization’s supposedly unmitigated virtues. ... read

Comments: 1 Recommended: 0 Read: 48541

Globalization and the Beautiful Game

Dani Rodrik Series: Roads to Prosperity

2008-03-13

Is globalization mainly a force for good, enabling poor nations to lift themselves up from poverty, or does it create vast opportunities only for a small minority? To answer these questions, look no farther than soccer. ... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 47797

Who Killed Wall Street?

Dani Rodrik Series: Roads to Prosperity

2008-10-10

Perhaps it is futile to look for the single cause without which America's financial system would not have blown up. There were so many contributing factors that this may have been a case of a “perfect storm,” a rare failure that required a large number of stars to be in alignment simultaneously.... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 45231

Blame the Economists, Not Economics	Dani Rodrik
As the world economy tumbles off the edge of a precipice, critics of the economics profession are raising questions about its complicity in the current crisis. Rightly so: economists have plenty to answer for.... read
Is There a New Washington Consensus?	Dani Rodrik
At the end of May, a star-studded World Bank commission on economic growth rejected much of the traditional framework for advising policy makers in developing countries. Rather than offering facile answers such as “just let markets work” or “just get governance right,” the commission rightly emphasizes that each country must devise its own mix of remedies.... read

AUTHOR INFO

Dani Rodrik

Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University, is the author of The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy.

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