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Opinion
Paul Krugman

What Economists (Including Me) Got Wrong About Globalization

The models that scholars used to measure the impact of exports from developing countries in the 1990s underestimated the effect on jobs and inequality.

Trade mattered.

Trade mattered.

Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg
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This column is adapted from a chapter in “Meeting Globalization’s Challenges” (Princeton University Press), a collection of papers by scholars who contributed to a conference at the International Monetary Fund on Oct. 11, 2017. The book will be published on Nov. 4.

Concerns about adverse effects from globalization aren’t new. As U.S. income inequality began rising in the 1980s, many commentators were quick to link this new phenomenon to another new phenomenon: the rise of manufactured exports from newly industrializing economies.