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I am organizing the proposal for an HES session at the 2003 ASSA meetings on the theme,
"Alternative accounts of the end of globalization."  Most of the presenters and
commentators are lined up, but we lack a third paper.  I invite those whose projects might
fit in, and who would like to contribute, to write to me at [log in to unmask]  The theme
and participants are below. I hope to wrap it up by the weekend of April 6.
 
"Alternative Accounts of the End of Globalization" 
 
Chair: J. Bradford DeLong 
Organizer: Stephen Meardon 
 
Theme: 
 
Among inquiries into the causes globalization and prophesies of what may come of it, some
take a historical perspective, implying commonly a "moral" for the present.  One such
perspective sees an earlier era of globalization as having been "broken apart by the
successive hammer blows of World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the Great Depression"
(Thomas Friedman); the moral is that we must attend to the violent conflict bred by
globalization in the present.  Another sees the earlier globalization as having met "a
powerful and comprehensive backlash" which "developed in response to the actual or
perceived distributional effects of globalization" (Kevin O'Rourke and Jeffrey
Williamson); the moral is that we must attend to the inequities engendered by
globalization in the present.
 
To judge better what lesson for the present is to be drawn from the past, alternative
accounts of the earlier globalization - accounts of how different changes contributed (or
mattered little) to its end, and how they might (or might not) do the same today - can be
put head to head.  Changes in tariff and monetary policies, technologies, transportation
costs, or the distribution of income can be measured and their historical consequences
evaluated.  Accounts centered on such changes can be juxtaposed with accounts centered on
changes in ideas, generated outside or within the academy, appropriated widely or perhaps
scarcely by policy makers.  Accounts of provenance in economic history can thus be pitted
against those from the history of ideas.  Is one account or the other a more convincing
tale of the end of globalization?  Do they instead support each other - and if so, how?
Does a compelling moral emerge, or do the differences between the past and present
globalization stand out, undermining any such moral?
 
Papers: 
 
1. Antoni Estevadeordal, Inter-American Development Bank, and Alan M. 
Taylor, University of California, Davis.  "The Rise and Fall of World Trade, 
1870-1939" (with Brian Frantz).  
 
2. Stephen Meardon, Inter-American Development Bank. "The Metaphysical Club, 
the Political Economy Club, and the Predominance of Protection, 1875-1913." 
 
 
3. T.B.A. 
 
Comments: 
 
J. Bradford DeLong (session chair), Professor of Economics, University of California at
Berkeley.  Former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy, United States Department
of the Treasury, and author of _The Economic History of the Twentieth Century: Slouching
Towards Utopia?_ (in progress).
 
Alfred E. Eckes Jr., Ohio Eminent Research Professor, Department of History, Ohio
University.  Former chairman of the United States International Trade Commission, and
author of _Globalization and the American Century_ (Cambridge University Press,
forthcoming 2002).
 
Brink Lindsey, Director, Center for Trade Policy Studies, Cato Institute. Author of
_Against the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism_ (John Wiley & Sons,
2001).
 
 
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