International relations (IR) are the interactions among sovereign states. The scientific study of those interactions is also referred to as international studies, international politics, or international affairs. In a broader sense, the study of IR, in addition to multilateral relations, concerns all activities among states—such as war, diplomacy, trade, and foreign policy—as well as relations with and among other international actors, such as intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), international legal bodies, and multinational corporations (MNCs). There are several schools of thought within IR, of which the most prominent are realism, liberalism, and constructivism.
Protectionism, sometimes referred to as trade protectionism, is the economic policy of restricting imports from other countries through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, import quotas, and a variety of other government regulations. Proponents argue that protectionist policies shield the producers, businesses, and workers of the import-competing sector in the country from foreign competitors. Opponents argue that protectionist policies reduce trade, and adversely affect consumers in general as well as the producers and workers in export sectors, both in the country implementing protectionist policies and in the countries against which the protections are implemented.
A country's industrial policy (IP) or industrial strategy is its official strategic effort to encourage the development and growth of all or part of the economy, often focused on all or part of the manufacturing sector. The government takes measures "aimed at improving the competitiveness and capabilities of domestic firms and promoting structural transformation". A country's infrastructure is a major enabler of the wider economy and so often has a key role in IP.
Race to the bottom is a socio-economic phrase to describe either government deregulation of the business environment or reduction in corporate tax rates, in order to attract or retain economic activity in their jurisdictions. While this phenomenon can happen between countries as a result of globalization and free trade, it also can occur within individual countries between their sub-jurisdictions. It may occur when competition increases between geographic areas over a particular sector of trade and production. The effect and intent of these actions is to lower labor rates, cost of business, or other factors over which governments can exert control.
The Washington Consensus is a set of ten economic policy prescriptions considered to constitute the "standard" reform package promoted for crisis-wracked developing countries by Washington, D.C.-based institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and United States Department of the Treasury. The term was first used in 1989 by English economist John Williamson. The prescriptions encompassed free-market promoting policies such as trade liberalization, privatization and finance liberalization. They also entailed fiscal and monetary policies intended to minimize fiscal deficits and minimize inflation.
International political economy (IPE) is the study of how politics shapes the global economy and how the global economy shapes politics. A key focus in IPE is on the distributive consequences of global economic exchange. It has been described as the study of "the political battle between the winners and losers of global economic exchange."
The impossible trinity is a concept in international economics and international political economy which states that it is impossible to have all three of the following at the same time:
Dani Rodrik is a Turkish economist and Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He was formerly the Albert O. Hirschman Professor of the Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He has published widely in the areas of international economics, economic development, and political economy. The question of what constitutes good economic policy and why some governments are more successful than others at adopting it is at the center of his research. His works include Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science and The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy. He is also joint editor-in-chief of the academic journal Global Policy.
International economics is concerned with the effects upon economic activity from international differences in productive resources and consumer preferences and the international institutions that affect them. It seeks to explain the patterns and consequences of transactions and interactions between the inhabitants of different countries, including trade, investment and transaction.
The Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), known until 2006 as the Institute for International Economics (IIE), is an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. It was founded by C. Fred Bergsten in 1981 and has been led by Adam S. Posen since 2013. PIIE conducts research, provides policy recommendations, and publishes books and articles on a wide range of topics related to the US economy and international economics.
Regional Integration is a process in which neighboring countries enter into an agreement in order to upgrade cooperation through common institutions and rules. The objectives of the agreement could range from economic to political to environmental, although it has typically taken the form of a political economy initiative where commercial interests are the focus for achieving broader socio-political and security objectives, as defined by national governments. Regional integration has been organized either via supranational institutional structures or through intergovernmental decision-making, or a combination of both.
Ricardo Hausmann is the former Director of the Center for International Development currently leading the Center for International Development’s Growth Lab and is a Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is also a former Venezuelan Minister of Planning and former Head of the Presidential Office of Coordination and Planning (1992–1993). He co-introduced several regularly used concepts in economics including original sin, growth diagnostics, self-discovery, dark matter, the product space, and economic complexity.
The Westphalian system, also known as Westphalian sovereignty, is a principle in international law that each state has exclusive sovereignty over its territory. The principle developed in Europe after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, based on the state theory of Jean Bodin and the natural law teachings of Hugo Grotius. It underlies the modern international system of sovereign states and is enshrined in the United Nations Charter, which states that "nothing ... shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state."
Capital controls are residency-based measures such as transaction taxes, other limits, or outright prohibitions that a nation's government can use to regulate flows from capital markets into and out of the country's capital account. These measures may be economy-wide, sector-specific, or industry specific. They may apply to all flows, or may differentiate by type or duration of the flow.
Since its creation in 1995, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has worked to maintain and develop international trade. As one of the largest international economic organizations, it has strong influence and control over trading rules and agreements, and thus has the ability to affect a country's economy immensely. The WTO policies aim to balance tariffs and other forms of economic protection with a trade liberalization policy, and to "ensure that trade flows as smoothly, predictably and freely as possible". Indeed, the WTO claims that its actions "cut living costs and raise standards, stimulate economic growth and development, help countries develop, [and] give the weak a stronger voice." Statistically speaking, global trade has consistently grown between one and six percent per annum over the past decade, and US$38.8 billion were allocated to Aid for Trade in 2016.
Nancy Birdsall is an American economist, the founding president of the Center for Global Development (CGD) in Washington, DC, USA, and former executive vice-president of the Inter-American Development Bank. She co-founded CGD in November 2001 with C. Fred Bergsten and Edward W. Scott Jr. and served as president until 2016. Prior to becoming the President of CGD, Birdsall served for three years as Senior Associate and Director of the Economic Reform Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her work at Carnegie focused on issues of globalization and inequality, as well as the reform of the international financial institutions. During 1993 to 1998, she oversaw a $30 billion public and private loan portfolio at the Inter-American Development Bank, the largest of the regional development banks. Before joining the Inter-American Development Bank, Birdsall spent 14 years in research, policy, and management positions at the World Bank. Most recently she served as the director of the Policy Research Department.
Arvind Subramanian is an Indian economist and the former Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India, having served from 16 October 2014 to 20 June 2018. Subramanian is currently a Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. He previously served as Professor of Economics at Ashoka University and a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Center for Global Development.
Takashi Inoue is a public relations practitioner, scholar, and theorist. His theories include the "three forces of hyper-globalization", the "Self-Correction Model of Public Relations", and the "Japan model". He was the first to teach public relations courses at a major university in post-war Japan and is the Chairman and CEO of Inoue Public Relations, which he founded in 1970. He is a Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Management, Kyoto University and at Kobe Institute of Computing. He was quoted in foreign press reports on the East Japan Earthquake and the 2018 arrest in Japan of Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn. He has written about modern Japan's lack of PR skills and has described the resulting "Deficiency of Japanese diplomacy", and in 2010 he wrote that corporate Japan's scandals have created "A culture of apologies: Communicating crises in Japan"
The political trilemma of the world economy is a concept created by economist Dani Rodrik to capture the trade-offs that governments faced in their responses to globalization. The trilemma holds that "democracy, national sovereignty and global economic integration are mutually incompatible: we can combine any two of the three, but never have all three simultaneously and in full." According to Rodrik, states embraced globalization and national autonomy in the late 19th century, but sacrificed democratic decision-making. In the post-World War II period, states sacrificed globalization while embracing democracy at home and national autonomy. The trilemma suggests that the backlash against globalization in the last few decades is rooted in a desire to reclaim democracy and national autonomy, even if it undermines economic integration. Rodrik first presented the trilemma in a 2000 paper.
