(Jan. 16, 2017) At the end of his time in office Barack Obama merits an enumeration of some of his many accomplishments. The recollection should start as he started, on January 20, 2009: the pilot taking the cockpit just when the plane was in an uncontrolled dive.
(May 20, 2016) The ITC Wednesday released its mandated report on the economic effects estimated to result from the TransPacific Partnership. As is usual in standard trade models, the estimated welfare gains may sound small: on the order of ¼ % of income. But that would still be way worth doing. Furthermore the ITC study, by design, leaves out a lot. For example, the Petri-Plummer study from the Peterson Institute estimates income gains from TPP that are twice as large, in part because it takes into account Melitz-style opportunities for more productive firms to expand.
(April 15, 2016) President Barack Obama has had a remarkable series of foreign policy triumphs over the last 12 months. One of the lesser-known was the passage of legislation for reform of the IMF on December 18, 2015, after five years of obstruction by the US Congress.