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A Frenchman rents a Hollywood movie. A Thai schoolgirl mimics Madonna. Saddam Hussein chooses Frank Sinatra's "My Way" as the theme song for his fifty-fourth birthday. It is a commonplace that globalization is subverting local culture. But is it helping as much as it hurts? In this strikingly original treatment of a fiercely debated issue, Tyler Cowen makes a bold new case for a more sympathetic understanding of cross-cultural trade. Creative destruction brings not stale suppositions but an economist's eye to bear on an age-old question: Are market exchange and aesthetic quality friends or foes? On the whole, argues Cowen in clear and vigorous prose, they are friends. Cultural "destruction" breeds not artistic demise but diversity. Through an array of colorful examples from the areas where globalization's critics have been most vocal, Cowen asks what happens when cultures collide through trade, whether technology destroys native arts, why (and whether) Hollywood movies rule the world, whether "globalized" culture is dumbing down societies everywhere, and if national cultures matter at all. Scrutinizing such manifestations of "indigenous" culture as the steel band ensembles of Trinidad, Indian handweaving, and music from Zaire, Cowen finds that they are more vibrant than ever--thanks largely to cross-cultural trade. For all the pressures that market forces exert on individual cultures, diversity typically increases within society, even when cultures become more like each other. Trade enhances the range of individual choice, yielding forms of expression within cultures that flower as never before. While some see cultural decline as a half-empty glass, Cowen sees it as a glass half-full with the stirrings of cultural brilliance

AbstractThe complexity of supply chains means that it is difficult to tell where national security arguments begin and end. That may weaken some of the traditional arguments for free trade for the same reasons that we accept the difficulty of rational economic calculation in a socialist society. National security arguments for protectionism may not remain restricted to very small and manageable segments of the economy. Liberals and cosmopolitans will need to pay greater heed to these problems. This essay also considers why complex supply chains may create problems for a carbon tax and for the notion of corporate social responsibility.

Abstract:Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? One of Keynes's most famous essays is his "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren." Keynes predicts that within one hundred years — which would bring us to 2030 — most scarcity will have disappeared and most individuals will work no more than fifteen hours a week. My question is a simple one: Why wasn't Keynes right? Why have working hours remained as long as they have? Why hasn't progress taken a more leisurely and less material form than what we have observed? Investigating that issue will help us get at the question of just how much progress has occurred. Under one view, Western life has been caught in a kind of rat race, and a lot of the gains of progress are illusory. For instance there is the argument that higher incomes are largely consumed as part of a futile race to win relative status, and living standards aren't nearly as high as they might appear. Under some alternative scenarios, people haven't moved to Keynes's scenario for some good reasons, such as enjoying work more than we might think, or other hypotheses, as I will outline. In that case the observed changes in real income are robust, and measured correctly, or progress may even be greater than income measurements would indicate. I hope that addressing Keynes's paradox can help us better understand this longstanding debate on the nature of modern progress.

Every now and then, the field of economics produces an important book; this is one of them. Thomas Piketty's tome will put capitalist wealth back at the center of public debate, resurrect interest in the subject of wealth distribution, and revolutionize how people view the history of income inequality. On top of that, although the book's prose (translated from the original French) might not qualify as scintillating, any educated person will be able to understand it -- which sets the book apart from the vast majority of works by high-level economic theorists. Adapted from the source document.

Just try looking for foreign cookbooks in any American bookstore: The shelves will be littered with French and Italian fare, East Asian and Indian selections, and a smattering from places south of the equator. The very geography tells a story: Call it the cookbook indicator of economic development. First consider global cuisines like Mexican or Chinese. You can find a handful of good cookbooks pretty much anywhere these days. It's development economics in practice -- a foodie measure of how much these societies have moved toward greater commercialization, large-scale production, and standardization of production processes. Quite simply, it's the recipe for economic progress. Cookbooks can also tell people when they've reached some post-modern stage of economic development: It's when cookbooks cease to be useful at all. Soon it will be possible to cook the dishes of the entire world, but only those, alas, that survive the process of commercialization and standardization. Adapted from the source document.

In a recession, most economic sectors face hard times. Economists call this phenomenon "comovement," and it is considered one of the most fundamental features of business cycles. Nonetheless, there are exceptions to most general principles, including this one. There are, in fact, many winners -- not one -- from the great crash of 2008, sectors that have shown signs of prospering in tough economic times and, more importantly, have shown signs of prospering because they have been in some tough times. It there is one strand that holds these disparate entities together, it is that all understood the zeitgeist of the downturn and knew how to profit from it. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractIt is commonly claimed that rule consequentialism (utilitarianism) collapses into act consequentialism, because sometimes there are benefits from breaking the rules. I suggest this argument is less powerful than has been believed. The argument requires a commitment to a very particular (usually implicit) account of feasibility and constraints. It requires the presupposition that thinking of rules as the relevant constraint is incorrect. Supposedly we should look at a smaller unit of choice—the single act—as the relevant choice variable. But once we see feasibility as a matter of degree, there is no obvious cut-off point for how broadly we should think about the constraints on our choices. Treating "a bundle of choices" as a relevant free variable is no less defensible than treating "a single act" as the relevant free variable. Rule utilitarianism, rule consequentialism, and other rules-based approaches are stronger than their current reputation.

The world can be a humbling place for the purveyor of big ideas Each year, earth-shattering events upend received criticism and demand fresh thinking. So what are the big ideas that should be thrown out this year? 1. Illegal Mexican immigration is a growing threat. 2. Green energy will save us. 3. Bank runs are a thing of the past. 4. The Eurozone is for pretty much everyone in Europe. 5. Bailouts should be incremental. 6. Fiscal stimulus should be "temporary, targeted and timely.". Adapted from the source document.