Watching an old West Wing episode, I encountered this odd line from Jed Bartlet (played by Martin Sheen), the Nobel laureate and President in Aaron Sorkin’s popular series:

When I was 26, I wrote a paper supporting the deregulation of Far East trade barriers. Nearly got thrown out of the London School of Economics. I was young and stupid, and trying to make some noise.

Does “deregulation of trade barriers” mean liberalisation? When would that have been so unpopular? And has anyone ever been “thrown out” of a department for research activities?

What are the best and worst appearances by international economics in popular entertainment?

This directory probably isn’t a bad place to kill some free time.

Bill Easterly’s White Man’s Burden will become a video documentary directed by Douglas Busby, due out in 2010. Easterly on the title and his epiphany.

The BBC is following a shipping container for a year to “tell stories of globalisation.” Here’s the map tracking its journey across the globe.

[HT: Kevin Palmstein]

The US nominal average ad valorem tariff rate for (12 Days of) Christmas this year, which I calculated using the handy Harmonized (Tariff) Christmas schedule, is only 1.9%. I assume that Santa has MFN status.

Drums 4.8%
Pipes 0%
Milking machines 0%
Swans 1.8%
Geese $.02/kg
Golden rings 5.5%
Calling birds 1.8%
French hens $.02/kg
Turtle doves 1.8%
Partridge 1.8%
Pear tree 0%

Dani Rodrik discusses growth diagnostics at Vox Talks.

Via DeLong: Paul Krugman’s Nobel lecture on increasing returns is tomorrow.

I’ll be doing very little blogging over the next two weeks as I approach semester exams.

Lots from the NBER this week, here are ungated links.

• Between 1875 and 1913, industrial tariffs are positively correlated with growth while agricultural tariffs are negatively correlated with growth. [Lehmann & O’Rourke]
• China’s export expansion has only dampened other developing country’s exports by around 1%. [Hanson & Robertson]

There’s a great, long piece on Somali piracy in the FT by James Blitz and Robert Wright. Here are the trade-related highlights, but follow the link for lots more interesting details.

There have been 95 attacks by Somali pirates on vessels this year, with 39 ships captured and nearly 800 crew held. More than $20m has been paid in ransoms by shipowners and insurers… These pirates of the Horn are worrying governments around the world for several reasons. Their activities are bringing sclerosis to one of the world’s main trade arteries – the Gulf of Aden, which sees the passage of 20,000 ships a year. Shipping companies are beginning to divert their vessels round the Cape of Good Hope, increasing journey times by 30 per cent…

People in the shipping industry have for some time been irritated by the word “pirate” – with its romantic and exotic connotations – and like to remind the public that the hijackers are hardened criminals… In a society stricken by poverty, their boldness, organisation and technical savoir-faire impress one security expert: “They treat this as a business. They’ve upgraded what it means to be a pirate.”…

Attacks during shipping’s last piracy crisis – in the Malacca Strait separating Indonesia from Malaysia and Singapore – were less frequent and limited mainly to armed robbery of crews and ships’ offices. But that problem – which Pottengal Mukundan, IMB director, calls “maritime mugging” – has been largely eliminated since 2006 by improved security co-operation between the three coastal states…

“This Somali piracy problem is going to be on the international security agenda for some time,” says a senior UK official. “It is a highly lucrative business, providing a job-creation scheme in a country with very few other outlets and which also happens to be in a very sensitive part of the global trading system.”