RESEARCH IN PROGRESS

1. “Narrow New Issues as a Natural Way Forward for the WTO.”  Manuscript.

An argument that the World Trade Organization should broaden global integration’s appeal by undertaking regulatory initiatives to disseminate intellectual property, to create threshold competition-policy baselines, and to nest freedom of association and collective bargaining as a service eligible for treatment under the General Agreement on Trade in Services.

Click here for abstract.
Click here for paper.

2. “The Link between Trade and Income: Export Effect, Import Effect, or Both?,” with Jan Ondrich And Shuo Zhang.  Manuscript.

A new framework to evaluate how cross-country differences in export openness and import openness in 1990 affected the level of real per capita income. Pure instrumental variable estimators are used to extract the exogenous components of total trade (exports plus imports) and of net exports, which in turn imply distinct export and import effects. We build on an existing literature (Frankel-Romer and others) that uses countries’ geography as an instrument for total trade openness.  We build on countries’ demography to develop a novel instrument for net export openness. Our new estimates reveal that export openness alone correlates with income cross-sectionally, not import openness.

Click here for paper

3. “Imputing and Interpreting Trade in Intermediate Goods and Services: A U.S. Illustration for the 1990s,” with David M. Huether.  Partially complete manuscript.

An attempt to create a pair of panels (60-plus input-output sectors, 1989-to-date): imputed American exports and imports of (a) intermediate goods and services, and (b) final goods and services.

4. “Lessons for a Globalizing World: European and U.S. Experiences in Market Integration,” with Ellen L. Frost, Craig Parsons, and Michael Schneider.  Lead chapter to an edited book containing other papers presented at a September 2002 conference on these themes. Partially complete manuscript.

A examination of the historical comparability of regulatory and political development in late-19^th century America and the contemporary European Union, with one eye on what was necessary for the populace to broadly support deep single-market integration, and the other eye on what regulatory/political principles might be transferable to all current efforts at regional and global integration.  An Asian-focused version of the argument, to be authored by Craig Parsons and me, has been accepted for a forthcoming Special Edition of the Journal of Asia Economics, to be edited by Erik Jones.

Click here for partial draft.

5. “Some Quick, Personal, Provisional Notes on Multi-Disciplinarity in the Social Sciences.”  Partially complete manuscript.

An still-being-thought-out attempt to demarcate the constructive potential for co-authored research from a social-sciences multi-disciplinary perspective.  Prepared for the multi-disciplinary doctoral research seminar that I coordinate for The Maxwell School’s Global Affairs Institute, but with an eye to publishing it in an appropriate place.

Click here for partial draft.

6. “Recent Cross-Border Competition-Policy Transfer and Convergence.” Paper in process for an April 2003 Conference on the Political Economy of Policy Transfer, Learning, and Convergence, Tulane University.  Jointly authored with Julian L. Clarke and Simon J. Evenett.

Click here for partial draft.

7. Global Forces, American Faces: U.S. Economic Globalization at the Grass Roots .  Planned book-length IIE project.

A volume describing the growing consensus from the Institute for International Economics’ Globalization Balance Sheet (GBS) family of projects.  These projects have sought to measure globalization’s under-appreciated benefits and under-quantified distributional costs in the United States, exploiting the growing (global) availability of genuinely microeconomic data – censuses and surveys of real-life households, workers, firms, and communities.  In the completed projects, there is a growing consensus that deeper global integration is a mixed blessing for the United States.  It enhances the economic “fitness” and opportunities of a large number of Americans who in turn rejuvenate their workplaces, unions, firms, and industries.  Yet it actually worsens prospects for those Americans unwilling or unable to engage globally.  Americans with average skills, women, and blue-collar union members are among those who are disproportionately represented in the more insular sub-population.

Click here for background report on the GBS family of projects

8. “Globalization’s Talkers And Doers Together: Whither A Constructive Agenda,” with Kimberly Ann Elliott.  Planned IIE Policy Brief.

An extension of an earlier paper (Elliott, Kar, and Richardson (2002), forthcoming) that described the actors and objectives in the alternative-globalization movement.  This Policy Brief emphasizes the common ground between thoughtful critics of globalization and reform-tolerant enthusiasts.

9. Free Trade in Worker Agency Services, with Kimberly Ann Elliott.  Planned monograph-length IIE project.

This project aims to outline and evaluate a proposal for open trade in worker agency services (those normally provided by worker organizations and labor unions).  The arrangements would conform roughly to the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) agreements on open trade in other services.  The proposal would imply WTO acceptance of only one of the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) familiar core labor principles, specifically freedom of association and collective bargaining.  That principle belongs in the WTO because it is basically a proposal for liberalization of trade in services and therefore falls sensibly under the rubric of the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services.  The International Labor Organization would remain the forum for discussion of and commitment to the many important broader labor-market principles, beyond this one.