Throughout the next weeks, we will regularly feature the keynote speeches held by our distinguished experts at this year’s digital Free Market Road Show. The times we are living in – the pandemic – are times when our fundamental values are threatened maybe more than ever in modern times. More than ever in modern times because we are living not in a time of containment, with an Iron Curtain, or a Bamboo Curtain, dividing the world in two as in the Cold...
Read More »On the Gains from Integration in the European Union
In an interview with the NZZ, Gabriel Felbermayr explains where the European Union adds value, and where it doesn’t. The key points: Free trade for goods and services as well as capital and labor mobility are partial substitutes. Partial, because factor mobility fosters trade and technology transfer. Estimates suggest that free trade and capital mobility generate more than 80% of the welfare gains from European integration. Even labor mobility does not require admission into welfare...
Read More »Global Asset Allocation Update
Note: This will be a short update. We are shifting the timing of some of our reports. The monthly Global Asset Allocation update will now be published in the first week of the month, aiming for the first of each month. I’ll put out a full report next week. The Bi-Weekly Economic Review is shifting to a monthly update, published on the 15th of each month. We are doing this to make room for some new reports, podcasts and...
Read More »It Was ‘Dollars’ All Along
Ross Perot famously declared the “giant sucking sound” in the 1992 Presidential campaign. The debate over NAFTA did not end with George H. W. Bush’s defeat, as it simmered in one form or another for much of the 1990’s. Curiously, however, it seemed almost perfectly absent during the 2000’s, the very decade in which Perot’s prophecy came true. Americans didn’t notice because there was a bubble afoot. That bubble,...
Read More »You’ll Only Understand Trump and Brexit If You Understand the Failure of Globalization
[See also The Numbers Show Trump Win NOT Due to Racism and Sexism] You can only understand the victory of Donald Trump and Brexit once you understand the failure of globalization … Trump Trump made rejection of globalization a centerpiece of his campaign. In his July 21st acceptance speech as the Republican nominee, he said: Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo. The Boston Globe bannered this headline on...
Read More »You’ll Only Understand Trump and Brexit If You Understand the Failure of Globalization
[See also The Numbers Show Trump Win NOT Due to Racism and Sexism] You can only understand the victory of Donald Trump and Brexit once you understand the failure of globalization … Trump Trump made rejection of globalization a centerpiece of his campaign. In his July 21st acceptance speech as the Republican nominee, he said: Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo. The Boston Globe bannered this headline on Thursday: “Trump won. Globalization lost. Now...
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