Why, After 200 Years, Can’t Economists Sell Free Trade?

Alan S. Blinder, Princeton University, presented the Institute's third Annual O. John Olcay Lecture on Ethics and Economics at the Institute on May 25, 2017. He addressed the question “Why, After 200 Years, Can’t Economists Sell Free Trade?” Few issues elicit greater unanimity of opinion among economists, yet the public remains skeptical and may be growing more hostile toward globalization. Blinder provided his thinking on what the public and the economists respectively are missing.

Blinder is the Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and has been on the faculty since 1971, taking time for public service from January 1993 through January 1996 in the US government, first as a member of President Clinton's original Council of Economic Advisers and then as vice chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He is currently a visiting fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.

The annual O. John Olcay Lecture on Ethics and Economics is held in memory of John Olcay, a longtime friend and intellectual supporter of the Institute, particularly of work on monetary and financial policy. Olcay had a distinguished career in global finance, notably as an adviser to several of the world’s central banks on reserves management and monetary policy.