This week “The Economist explains” is given over to economics. For each of six days until Saturday this blog will publish a short explainer on a seminal idea. DOES trade hurt wages? Or, more precisely ...

There was a big debate about this in the economics profession in the early 1990s. Not one single economist argued about the direction of trade’s effect ? it was universally agreed that it was negative ...

Rising inequality since the 1980s is clearly a serious problem that merits political attention. But focusing solely on trade is not the way to resolve it Inequality has become a major political ...

In a famous theorem, known as Stolper-Samuelson, he and a co-author showed that competition from imports of clothes and similar goods from underdeveloped countries, where producers rely on unskilled ...

He presents a domestic societal explanation of the passage of the Smoot-Hawley tariff act of 1930. Eichengreen argues that economic interest groups were the key actor. Eichengreen asserts that certain ...