If you’re occasionally confused when reading about PTAs and TPA, then imagine reading a paper that talks about FTAs (free trade agreements) and FTA (fast track authority). Good grief.

The latest issue of The World Economy looks at economic integration agreements (EIAs), which include PTAs, RTAs, FTAs, CUs, etc:

In light of the continuing proliferation of EIAs worldwide, it would seem that policy makers, businesses and consumers would all benefit from a better map guiding the sequencing of EIAs, a map that better addresses the choice of EIA partners, the breadth of agreements, the depth of integration, etc. With few exceptions, there is a virtual dearth of analyses of the sequencing of economic integration agreements. The 50-year anniversary of the most successful EIA in world history provides an opportune moment to consider lessons to be learned as other continents – the Americas, Asia and Africa – move forward with their own economic integration agendas.

This special issue of The World Economy includes seven papers that were presented at a symposium, ‘The Sequencing of Regional Economic Integration: Issues in the Depth and Breadth of Economic Integration in the Americas’, which was held at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame on 9–10 September 2005…

I have not yet had time to read any of the papers yet, but they’re likely worth a peek. I’ve highlighted Simon J. Evenett and Michael Meier’s article on the US strategy of competitive liberalisation in the past.

Ben Muse points to a new book on trade and inequality by Robert Z. Lawrence. I await Paul Krugman’s response.

Many of conference papers from last week’s AEA meetings are now available. I haven’t looked at them yet, but over the coming week I’ll be checking out the sessions on The Economic Geography of Trade and Production (chaired by Stephen Redding), Firm Heterogeneity and International Trade (chaired by Kala Krishna), Reform: For Better or for Worse? (chaired by Gene Grossman), Offshoring and the Labor Market (chaired by Pol Antras), Trade and Political Economy (chaired by Giovanni Maggi), Innovation, Productivity, and Firm Behavior (chaired by Ralf Martin), and Anne Krueger’s piece on trade and development (pdf).

What are French and German students learning about globalisation?

“Economic growth imposes a hectic form of life, producing overwork, stress, nervous depression, cardiovascular disease and, according to some, even the development of cancer,” asserts Histoire du XXe siècle, a text memorised by French high-school students as they prepare for entrance exams to prestigious universities…

In several texts, students are taught that globalisation leads to violence and armed resistance, requiring a new system of world governance. “Capitalism” is described as “brutal”, “savage” and “American”. French students do not learn economics so much as a highly biased discourse about economics…

German textbooks emphasise corporatist and collectivist traditions and the minutiae of employer-employee relations – a zero-sum world where one loses what the other gains. People who run companies are caricatured as idle, cigar-smoking plutocrats…

Describing globalisation, another text has sections headed “Revival of Manchester Capitalism”, “Brazilianisation of Europe” and “Return of the Dark Ages”. India and China are successful, the book explains, because they practise state ownership and protectionism, while the freest markets are in impoverished sub-Saharan Africa. Like many French and German books, it suggests students learn more by contacting the anti-globalisation group Attac.

It is no surprise that the continent’s schools teach through a left-of-centre lens. The surprise is the intensity of the anti-market bias. Students learn that companies destroy jobs, while government policy creates them. Globalisation is destructive, if not catastrophic. Business is a zero-sum game. If this is the belief system within which most students develop intellectually, is it any wonder French and German reformers are so easily shouted down?

That’s Stefan Theil in the Financial Times (sub. req.), but read the unabridged version at Foreign Policy.

Ben Muse has an extensive summary of Americans’ responses to more than a dozen opinion polls about international trade in 2007.

My defense of the NYT is included in the New Year’s edition of the Carnival of the Capitalists.

Message to determined free traders: Paul Krugman is entirely consistent and intellectually honest in saying that trade had little impact on inequality in the 1990s and that he believes it increases inequality today. Moreover, he doesn’t recommend trade barriers as the remedy, so you have no reason to complain.

Dean Baker deviates from the Democratic base‘s obsession with halting new trade agreements:

As a practical matter, the country has already gone about as far as it can in placing its manufacturing workers in competition with low-wage workers in the developing world. The impact of any future trade deals on the US economy will be almost imperceptible.

The latter sentence may be true with regard to low-wage workers; it’s not true generally, unless Baker is implying that “any future trade deals” will be limited by political constraints. We can certainly imagine trade deals that would have noticeable impacts.

Dean Baker laments the uselessness of the WaPo‘s reporting on the dollar’s decline:

For example it tells us about a Kenyan coffee grower who is being hit because he sells his coffee for dollars that are rapidly losing their value. Well, coffee is priced on a world market. Its price fluctuates by the hour. If the dollar lost 90 percent of its value, then coffee would simply sell for ten times as much, measured in dollars, unless coffee was also declining in value. If coffee is declining in value, then the farmer’s problem is the decline in the value of coffee, not the decline in the value of the dollar. The story would be different if the coffee grower was locked into a longterm contract denominated in dollars. This may be the case, but the article doesn’t say anything about longterm contracts…

The sharp fall in the dollar over the last five years is a big deal for people in the United States and the rest of world. However, when the Post devotes a front page story to the topic it should at least make sure that it conveys some real information. This one doesn’t.