----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 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). ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]