Year: 1996
Author: Krugman, Paul R.
Genre: International Economics
Publisher: The MIT Press Cambridge
ISBN: 0-262-11210-8
English language
Format: PDF
Number of Pages: 241

Amazon.com Review
A collection of essays about international trade seems destined to be a snoozer, but Paul Krugman, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, somehow manages to write about an arcane subject in a lively manner that is actually entertaining. Krugman contends that many who are famed as experts on world trade actually misunderstand the subject completely, and he provides a startling commentary on some notables, from Lester Thurow to Ross Perot. Yet Krugman comes not merely to destroy; a reader can gain from his essays some real insight into economics, not to mention which economic commentators know their stuff.

Pop internationalists"—people who speak impressively about international trade while ignoring basic economics and misusing economic figures are the target of this collection of Paul Krugman's most recent essays. In the clear, readable, entertaining style that brought acclaim for his best-selling Age of Diminished Expectations, Krugman explains what real economic analysis is. He discusses economic terms and measurements, like "value-added" and GDP, in simple language so that readers can understand how pop internationalists distort, and sometimes contradict, the most basic truths about world trade.
All but two of the essays have previously appeared in such publications as Foreign Affairs, Scientific American, and the Harvard Business Review. The first five essays take on exaggerations of foreign competition's effects on the U.S. economy and represent Krugman's central criticisms of public debate over world trade. The next three essays expose further distortions of economic theory and include the complete, unaltered, controversial review of Laura Tyson's Who's Bashing Whom. The third group of essays highlights misconceptions about competition from less industrialized countries. The concluding essays focus on interesting and legitimate economic questions, such as the effects of technological change on society.

Introduction
I A Zero-Sum World?
1 Competitiveness: A Dangerous Obsession
2 Proving My Point
3 Trade, Jobs, and Wages
(with Robert Z. Lawrence)
4 Does Third World Growth Hurt First World Prosperity?
5 The Illusion of Conflict in International Trade
II Economic Theory, Good and Bad
6 Myths and Realities of U.S. Competitiveness
7 Economic Shuttle Diplomacy: A Review of LauraD'Andrea Tyson's Who's Bashing Whom?
8. What Do Undergrads Need to Know about Trade?
III The emerging world
9.Challenging Conventional Wisdom
10. The Uncomfortable Truth about NAFTA
11. Asia's Miracle
IV Technology and Society
12. Technology's Revenge
13. The Localization of the World Economy

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