Dani Rodrik at http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/12/joe-and-i.html answers the review session question I could not answer: What are the differences between Joe Stiglitz's and Dani Rodrik's thoughts on development?
PE 101 students, I advise you to take note...
Dani Rodrik's weblog: Joe and I: Brad DeLong reports that a student of his wants to know the difference, if any, between Joe Stiglitz's views on development and mine. Frankly, I had not thought about this quite in this way before, so the question set me thinking. I know that I have shaken my head many times at things that Joe has said or written, so I know there are differences. But what are they?
Leaving issues of rhetoric aside (which I am afraid are often important), here are a few points for future students who want to see the product differentiation a bit more clearly.
Joe sees the world economic system as grossly unfair to poor nations, and this unfairness as a severe constraint on their development. This has never been a big part of my own thinking, partly because I don't see things in quite the same black-and-white terms, and also more importantly because I do not believe the constraints lie in the external rules. I see the main constraints as being internal--domestic politics and policies. Consequently, our take on issues like Doha is quite different. Joe sees a one-sided set of commitments on the part of rich countries to open up their markets in agriculture and other goods as being very important. I see very little benefits from Doha for the poor countries under the best of scenarios.
Joe sees international organizations (in particularly the IMF) as being the driver of policy in many developing countries, with uniformly negative consequences. I think that to the extent that this is true, it is more because poor-country leaders choose to rely on their advice excessively than it is because these institutions have the power and ability to impose their will on the world. Much of the bad economic policy in these countries has been self-imposed, and I don't think the fault should be placed at the doorstep of multilateral institutions. The truth is that developing country leaders have too often abdicated their own responsibilities.
On the substance of development policy, I think Joe's approach is holistic and comprehensive, whereas mine is selective and sequential. As far as I am aware he has not articulated a vision of how developing nations should choose among competing priorities, whereas a lot of my recent work focuses on that specifically. He thinks of growth, development, and social policies as all one thing--whereas I think of them as distinct in terms of policy needs.
On macroeconomic policy, Joe has an instinctively dove-ish position on inflation, believing that central banks can always loosen up at the margin with little cost to overall macro stability. I think many circumstances demand a more hawkish position on monetary policy and inflation-especially when fiscal policy is not cooperative.
There. That should be enough to fill up an essay question.
J. Bradford DeLong, Professor of Economics at U.C Berkeley, a Research Associate of the NBER, a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and Chair of Berkeley's Political Economy major.
Among his best works are: "Is Increased Price Flexibility Stabilizing?" "Productivity Growth, Convergence, and Welfare," "Noise Trader Risk in Financial Markets," "Equipment Investment and Economic Growth," "Princes and Merchants: European City Growth Before the Industrial Revolution," "Why Does the Stock Market Fluctuate?" "Keynesianism, Pennsylvania-Avenue Style," "America's Peacetime Inflation: The 1970s," "American Fiscal Policy in the Shadow of the Great Depression," "Review of Robert Skidelsky (2000), John Maynard Keynes, volume 3, Fighting for Britain," "Between Meltdown and Moral Hazard: Clinton Administration International Monetary and Financial Policy," "Productivity Growth in the 2000s," "Asset Returns and Economic Growth."
The Eighteen-Year-Old is going to college next year, which means that I need to think about making more money. (The idea that one might write checks to rather than receive checks from universities is now strange to me.) So I have signed up with the Leigh Speakers' Bureau which also handles, among many others: Chris Anderson; Suzanne Berger; Michael Boskin; Kenneth Courtis; Clive Crook; Bill Emmott; Robert H. Frank; William Goetzmann; Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin; Paul Krugman; Bill McKibben; Paul Romer; Jeffrey Sachs; Robert Shiller;James Surowiecki; Martin Wolf; Adrian Wooldridge.
The Eighteen-Year-Old is going to college, which means that I need to think about making more money. (The idea that one might write checks to rather than receive checks from universities still seems very strange to me.) So I have signed up with the Leigh Speakers' Bureau which also handles, among many others: Chris Anderson; Suzanne Berger; Michael Boskin; Kenneth Courtis; Clive Crook; Bill Emmott; Robert H. Frank; William Goetzmann; Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin; Paul Krugman; Bill McKibben; Paul Romer; Jeffrey Sachs; Robert Shiller;James Surowiecki; Martin Wolf; Adrian Wooldridge.
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