Det tar (betydligt) längre tid att ställa om en drabbad ekonomi
2 april 2016 | Ingen har kommenterat än
Verkligheten uppför sig inte riktigt som de ekonomiska modellerna, avsnitt 4732:
”Freer trade has inflicted a more grievous toll than economists, myself included, had expected. (…)
Most economists took the view that when countries lower their trade barriers, even unilaterally, they prosper. What the British wine industry loses, the UK computer games industry gains. Meanwhile, consumers get better and cheaper wine into the bargain.
It was always clear that, despite the win-win nature of trade at the national level, freer trade could create losers — such as British vineyards and French computer game studios. But the conventional wisdom was that these losses were both small and fixable with the right policies of retraining or redistribution. Most importantly, people who lost their jobs could find new ones in booming export industries.
A new research paper, “The China Shock”, from David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson, is part of a rethink under way in the economics profession. (…)
The US labour market is less flexible than we thought, it seems. In a simplified economic model, workers move smoothly to a new home, a new industry, even a new level of education. In practice, Autor and his colleagues find that communities hit by Chinese competition often do not adapt; they wither. It may take a generation or two, rather than a few years, to adjust.”
Tim Harford: Trump, trade and ‘the China shock’
Om det stämmer är det inte ett argument för protektionism – men för en mer ambitiös blandekonomi där samhälleliga insatser behövs för att parera dramatiska bortfall i sysselsättningen, underlätta övergången till nya områden och nya tekniker.
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