Author Archives: pwg

Statistics for (non-mathematical) trade analysts

I teach a ‘sum­mer inten­sive’ grad­u­ate course in Trade Research Meth­ods at the Uni­ver­sity of Ade­laide. In five days we cover every­thing from the role of evi­dence in pub­lic pol­icy to how to write a report that your boss will read (and even under­stand). Most of my stu­dents have no for­mal train­ing in sta­tis­tics (or …

February 3, 2013 – 8:45 am | By pwg | Posted in Public policy, Resources, Trade | Comments (1)

Is it time for WTO 2.0?

Richard Bald­win, whose writ­ing I like and whose schol­ar­ship I respect, thinks so. But I dis­agree for rea­sons I spell out (after sum­ma­riz­ing RB’s argu­ment) in my paper that you can down­load here In brief: if we could really do what needs to be done in a WTO 2.0, then we wouldn’t need WTO 2.0 to …

February 3, 2013 – 8:21 am | By pwg | Posted in Resources, Trade | Comments (0)

Should the Hobbit (1) be shorter?

I can see why peo­ple say it’s too long. There is a heap of stuff that COULD have been cut if the tar­get were a 90 — 120 minute movie. But I knew it was almost three hours when I bought the tick­ets so… Anway I’m a big fan of Wag­ner opera and you ain’t …

January 6, 2013 – 5:52 pm | By pwg | Posted in Movies | Comments (0)

Impressions of India

India remains a mys­tery to me. I spent two weeks in south­ern India in Jan­u­ary, in Chen­nai and Ker­ala. It was the first time I had vis­ited any part of the coun­try although, in the past decade I’ve spent some time in all of the states that bor­der India bar Nepal. I expected to find …

July 2, 2012 – 9:50 pm | By pwg | Posted in Countries | Comments (0)

Supply management has no place in the TPP

It would be mad­ness for Aus­tralia to agree to admit Canada to the TPP “free trade” nego­ti­a­tions on the basis that they might keep their astro­nom­i­cally high bar­ri­ers to some food imports. The Cana­dian Trade Min­is­ter, Ed Fast, told reporters this week that he believes Canada has “pub­lic sup­port” from six of the nine coun­tries …

April 18, 2012 – 8:20 am | By pwg | Posted in Trade | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Governed by the gutless?

Alan Beattie’s new book­let “Who’s in Charge Here” (Ama­zon) is an amus­ing, accu­rate, acces­si­ble account of the cur­rent mess in global finan­cial and trade “gov­er­nance.” Well worth the $3 price. But he draws a “les­son” from his lit­tle his­tory of the crises of 2008–2011 that I find un-satisfying. Who’s in Charge Here is a valu­able …

March 14, 2012 – 2:07 pm | By pwg | Posted in Foreign policy, Ideas, Trade | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Nothing to see here

Is there any point in con­tin­u­ing to puz­zle over trade pol­icy and agree­ments? Do they really make any dif­fer­ence to any­thing? It seems they’ve become too hard to put together; but does that mat­ter? Since about 2001, I’ve been writ­ing a weblog analysing inter­na­tional trade agree­ments, national trade poli­cies and the post-WWII “sys­tem” of gov­ern­ment …

February 16, 2012 – 1:27 pm | By pwg | Posted in Policy, Trade | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)