I am an academic at the University of Oxford who specializes in international political economy, so I study this topic for a living! I am particularly interested in the politics of international cooperation and economic development. Growing up, I traveled extensively in developing countries across Asia and Africa, which inspired in me a deep curiosity about the determinants of sustained economic growth. I also spent much time in Geneva, where my father frequently worked with United Nations agencies. His anecdotes about these institutions each evening made me wonder what caused some of them to perform effectively and others to perform poorly—and how they could be improved.
I wrote...
Making International Institutions Work: The Politics of Performance
Who writes the rules of the global economy? This book pulls back the curtain on what I consider one of the most profound transformations in global governance in recent decades: the delegation of regulatory authority by governments to international private-sector organizations, such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Accountability Standards Board (IASB).
I was only dimly aware of this shift before I read the book, and I had wondered who its “winners and losers” were across sectors and countries. The authors provide surprising and nuanced answers based on wide-ranging data collection as well as interviews with key stakeholders.
Over the past two decades, governments have delegated extensive regulatory authority to international private-sector organizations. This internationalization and privatization of rule making has been motivated not only by the economic benefits of common rules for global markets, but also by the realization that government regulators often lack the expertise and resources to deal with increasingly complex and urgent regulatory tasks. The New Global Rulers examines who writes the rules in international private organizations, as well as who wins, who loses--and why. Tim Buthe and Walter Mattli examine three powerful global private regulators: the International Accounting Standards Board, which develops financial…
This book presents one of the most thoughtful and—to me—convincing accounts of the relationship between globalization and economic growth.
The author rejects the simple dichotomies offered up by “pro-globalizers” and “anti-globalizers,” arguing that successful development tends to require experimentation, pragmatism, and the adaptation of policy tools to local contexts.
This empirically grounded perspective not only explains a great deal of variation in the fortunes of developing countries but also complements and extends key principles of economics.
In One Economics, Many Recipes, leading economist Dani Rodrik argues that neither globalizers nor antiglobalizers have got it right. While economic globalization can be a boon for countries that are trying to dig out of poverty, success usually requires following policies that are tailored to local economic and political realities rather than obeying the dictates of the international globalization establishment. A definitive statement of Rodrik's original and influential perspective on economic growth and globalization, One Economics, Many Recipes shows how successful countries craft their own unique strategies--and what other countries can learn from them. To most proglobalizers, globalization is a…
This book develops what I regard as the most important and insightful theory of why states pursue cooperation through international institutions.
The author’s argument, which innovatively brings insights from transaction cost economics to bear on the study of international cooperation, explains how such institutions deliver mutual benefits to states and why they are so enduring—even when the power structures that gave birth to them have crumbled.
This book is a comprehensive study of cooperation among the advanced capitalist countries. Can cooperation persist without the dominance of a single power, such as the United States after World War II? To answer this pressing question, Robert Keohane analyzes the institutions, or "international regimes," through which cooperation has taken place in the world political economy and describes the evolution of these regimes as American hegemony has eroded. Refuting the idea that the decline of hegemony makes cooperation impossible, he views international regimes not as weak substitutes for world government but as devices for facilitating decentralized cooperation among egoistic actors.…
I have long believed that development economists rely too heavily on reductive formal models that ignore on-the-ground realities and are backed by scant empirical evidence. This book makes a compelling case for observation—particularly in the form of randomized controlled trials that approximate scientific experiments “in the field.”
I admire its rigorous use of the scientific method to critique theoretical approaches that draw much of their legitimacy and influence from technical sophistication and abstraction.
Why do the poor borrow to save? Why do they miss out on free life-saving immunizations, but pay for unnecessary drugs? In Poor Economics , Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two practical visionaries working toward ending world poverty, answer these questions from the ground. In a book the Wall Street Journal called marvellous, rewarding," the authors tell how the stress of living on less than 99 cents per day encourages the poor to make questionable decisions that feed,not fight,poverty. The result is a radical rethinking of the economics of poverty that offers a ringside view of the lives of…
This classic work of political economy—one of the first books I read on the subject—begins with the striking observation that few countries follow the advice of economists in setting trade policy. Rather, this choice must be recognized as fundamentally political.
The author sets out an innovative formal framework that explains policy outcomes in terms of the transaction costs that arise in economic interactions (such as trade). This parsimonious yet powerful approach has significantly shaped my understanding of how economic policymaking works in practice.
The Making of Economic Policy begins by observing that most countries' trade policies are so blatantly contrary to all the prescriptions of the economist that there is no way to understand this discrepancy except by delving into the politics. The same is true for many other dimensions of economic policy.
Avinash Dixit looks for an improved understanding of the politics of economic policy-making from a transaction cost perspective. Such costs of planning, implementing, and monitoring an exchange have proved critical to explaining many phenomena in industrial organization. Dixit discusses the variety of similar transaction costs encountered in the political process…
From the World Bank to the World Health Organization, international institutions are essential for tackling many of the world's most urgent challenges. However, we know remarkably little about when they succeed, when they fail, and why. Making International Institutions Work proposes a new theory of institutional performance and tests it using diverse sources, including the most comprehensive dataset on the topic.
Challenging popular characterizations of international institutions as “runaway bureaucracies,” Ranjit Lall argues that the most serious threat to performance comes from the pursuit of particularistic political interests by states—paradoxically, the same actors who create and give purpose to institutions. The discreet operational processes through which international bureaucrats cultivate and sustain autonomy vis-à-vis governments, Lall contends, are critical to making institutions “work.”
My core value is realistic education—learning from each other’s errors and successes, but with full awareness of the difference between the determined past and the uncertain future. We can benefit from uncertainty, which I’ve been doing for a living as an engineer, academic researcher, and inventor. I make use of knowledge and science as much as possible, but I also know that strategic decisions for the uncertain future require skepticism and thinking to deal with the differences in a new circumstance. With my core value, I am passionate about sharing insights and knowledge that our formal education does not provide.
Everything in nature evolves by trial, error, and success—from fundamental physics, through evolution in biology, to how people learn, think, and decide.
This book presents a way of thinking and realistic knowledge that our formal education shuns. Stepping beyond this ignorance, the book shows how to deal with and even benefit from uncertainty by skeptical thinking, strategic decisions, and teamwork based on enlightened self-interests.
This bottom-up thinking is thought-provoking for leaders who wish to build teams rather than herds. The insights in the book will help you to be better prepared for the unexpected, less likely to conform when you…
Trial, Error, and Success: 10 Insights into Realistic Knowledge, Thinking, and Emotional Intelligence
Everything in nature evolves by trial, error, and success. They didn't teach you this in school, even though you should know why the rigid laws of physics don't rule nature and don't inhibit your free-will decisions to try, fail, and succeed. As a guide to success, this book shows how skepticism, prudent use of science, and thinking lead to strategic decisions for the uncertain future.
Presenting real-life examples, the thinking in the book combines sharp analyses with broad analogies to show:
How to identify realistic knowledge and avoid harm due to overgeneralized concepts.
How to create new knowledge and solve…
