Meeting Globalization's Challenges

October 11, 2017

Globalization – broadly defined as the integration of economic activity across national borders – is widely perceived to be at a crossroad. Its long-acknowledged benefits to economic growth, poverty reduction, and consumers’ access to varied goods at lower prices, have given way to growing public skepticism to foreign trade, out of concerns with job losses, de-industrialization, and inequality. Such skepticism has been aggravated by a string of international financial crises that have heightened unemployment and public debt in many countries, as well as by concerns about loss of national sovereignty and homeland security that help fuel anti-foreigner sentiments.

 

This conference will present new thinking on the benefits and costs of globalization, and on how old and new policy toolkits can be deployed to ensure that net benefits are more widely shared both within and across countries, so that the classical pro-globalization economic “calculus” can be better aligned with the social and political “calculus,” which may, at times, attempt to slow down or set back the globalization clock altogether.

 

[NOTE: Attendance to Sessions 1-4 is by invitation only, attendance to Session 5 and the Roundtable is open to participants of the 2017 Annual Meetings.]

 

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

08:00 – 08:30am

Registration and Continental Breakfast

08:30 – 08:45am

Opening Remarks by IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde

Watch the Opening Remarks

Room: HQ1, Concourse Level, 707-19

08:50 – 10:05am

Session 1: Trade, Growth, and Welfare
Room: HQ1, Concourse Level, 707-19

Watch the video

Chair: Maurice Obstfeld (International Monetary Fund)

Panelists:
Ufuk Akcigit (University of Chicago)
Anne Krueger (JohnsHopkins University)
Andrés Rodriguez-Clare (University of California, Berkeley)

10:05 – 10:25am

 ***Coffee Break***

10:30 – 11:45am

Session 2: Political Economy of Trade and Trade Policy
Room: HQ1, Concourse Level, 707-19 

Watch the video

Chair: Fred Bergsten (Peterson Institute for International Economics)

Panelists:
Edward Alden (Council on Foreign Relations)
Jeffry Frieden (Harvard University)
Michael Trebilcock (University of Toronto)

11:45 – 1:15pm

 ***Lunch Break***

1:15 – 2:30pm

 

Session 3: Trade and Inequality
Room: HQ1, Concourse Level, 707-19

Watch the video

Chair:  Heather Boushey (Washington Center for Equitable Growth)

Panelists:
François Bourguignon (Paris School of Economics)
Nina Pavcnik (Dartmouth College)
Matthew Slaughter (Dartmouth College)          

2:30 – 3:45pm

 

Session 4: Trade and Labor Market Adjustment
Room: HQ1, Concourse Level, 707-19

Watch the video

Chair:  Abebe Selassie (International Monetary Fund)

Panelists:        
Rafael Dix-Carneiro (Duke University)

Gordon Hanson (University of California, San Diego)

Lori Kletzer (Colby College and University of California, Santa Cruz)

3:45 – 4:15pm
***Coffee Break***

 

4:15 – 5:30pm

 

Session 5: Macro-Trade-Development Linkages
Room: HQ1, 3rd Floor, Meeting Halls A&B

Watch the video

Chair: Min Zhu (National Institute of Financial Research)

Panelists:        

Keyu Jin (London School of Economics)

Paul Krugman (CUNY and Princeton University)

Dani Rodrik (Harvard University)

5:30 – 5:45pm
***Coffee Break***

 

5:45 – 7:00pm
Room: HQ1, 3rd Floor, Meeting Halls A&B

Roundtable: The Future of Globalization
Room: HQ1, 3rd Floor, Meeting Halls A&B

Watch the video

Chair: Ernesto Zedillo (Yale University)

Angus Deaton (Princeton University)

Larry Summers (Harvard University – by video)

Laura Tyson (University of California, Berkeley)

Martin Wolf (The Financial Times)

Organizing committee: Maury Obstfeld (chair), Luis Catão, Tracey Lookadoo, Lucia Buono