Annual Report

The US response to supply chain disruptions has fractured global economic cooperation. PIIE scholars illuminated the tough tradeoffs posed by initiatives such as the Inflation Reduction Act, US export controls, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, and US challenges at the World Trade Organization.

• Chad P. Bown and Yilin Wang reported on an overlooked risk to global food security: China ordering its firms to stop selling fertilizer to other countries in order to preserve supplies at home. Paul Krugman cited their study in his New York Times column. It also generated extensive coverage in NPR and other outlets.
• Douglas A. Irwin’s work tracking the evolution of globalization continued to draw a broad audience. An interactive graphic and accompanying gif showing how cross-border trade and investment enabled both rich and poor countries to grow richer in recent decades were shared widely across social media. His updated PIIE Chart showing the retreat of globalization since 2008 ran on the front page of the Financial Times. His Working Paper and PIIE Chart on the role of international institutions in promoting trade reform found that the IMF’s support for trade has been underappreciated. 

• The hit Trade Talks podcast, now with solo host Chad P. Bown, released 15 episodes in 2022 and grew to 26,000 listeners per episode. The series grappled with electric vehicle subsidies and controls on Chinese semiconductor chipmakers and the mixed success of Cold War export controls. Episodes on national security and semiconductor trade and the disruption of global food supplies because of the war in Ukraine broke previous download records.

• A PIIE Chart based on Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Megan Hogan’s Policy Brief on the CHIPS and Science Act and US semiconductor production showed how even major chip exporters rely on imports. The graphic was shared widely on social media with extremely high engagement, particularly on LinkedIn.
• PIIE deepened public understanding of global minimum tax proposals. Kimberly Clausing’s op-eds in Foreign Affairs and Bloomberg (republished in the Washington Post) rebutted arguments that the tax increases would fuel inflation. Jason Furman’s Wall Street Journal op-ed argued the proposed system is good for the United States.
• PIIE scholars have been at the forefront of discussions around World Trade Organization (WTO) reform. Alan Wm. Wolff, former WTO deputy director-general, called for reviving world trade rules at Oslo’s Mt. Pelerin Society, a Parliamentary Conference on the WTO in Brussels, and at the WTO Public Forum in Geneva, outlining his vision for WTO reform. His Policy Brief with Robert Z. Lawrence defended the record of US free trade agreements, while calling for more steps to help those displaced by trade. 
• Jeffrey J. Schott and coauthors submitted recommendations on WTO reform to the G7 ahead of its June summit. Robert Z. Lawrence argued for more flexible trading rules, and Cecilia Malmström called on the WTO to do more for women following its Ministerial Conference, resulting in a meeting with US Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) to discuss her proposals
• In the media, Bown spoke to the BBC about the WTO ruling on US steel tariffs and to the Wall Street Journal about the ramifications of a WTO ruling authorizing China to impose retaliatory tariffs on the United States. Wolff talked to the Associated Press and Bloomberg News about the outlook for ministerial meetings, and Schott was interviewed for an educational explainer on the WTO for the Fox News podcast Getting Schooled.
• Adam S. Posen was a panelist at the European Parliament Post-COVID Summit in April 2022, providing insights into how trade, commerce, and finance will change in the post-pandemic age.
• Alan Wm. Wolff called for international cooperation to reduce trade frictions in a speech to the World Semiconductor Council in October.
• Luca David Opromolla and coauthors examined the effects of EU enlargement in a paper for the Journal of Political Economy and found welfare in new member countries would substantially improve, particularly for unskilled workers.

PIIE scholars tracked the international response to Russia’s shocking invasion and economic consequences of war across the globe.   

• Following the invasion, countries imposed coordinated economic sanctions against Russia. Chad P. Bown and PIIE’s data visualization team created an interactive sanctions tracker to follow their actions. The tracker became PIIE’s top piece published in 2022 and was cited by dozens of news organizations, including the New York Times and Financial Times, and shared by prominent figures on social media, including Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia, and Sabine Weyand, director-general for trade for the European Commission.
• PIIE hosted Oleg Ustenko, chief economic advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a discussion with PIIE’s Jacob Funk Kirkegaard broadcast live on Bloomberg News, CNBC, and C-SPAN. Ustenko commented on the economic sanctions and estimated, for the first time, the scale of Ukraine’s economic damage. The event was also covered by the Financial Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, CNN, and NPR.
• Adam S. Posen’s essay in Foreign Affairs on the war’s global economic impact ranked among the FA editor’s top 10 pieces of 2022. Posen made the list for the second consecutive year, after receiving the accolade in 2021 for his piece on the US withdrawal from globalization, “The Price of Nostalgia.” He appeared on CNN, NPR’s “All Things Considered” podcast, and was quoted extensively, including in the Washington Post.
• Martin Chorzempa’s analysis of Russian trade data in a PIIE blog post found that Russian imports from nonsanctioning countries, including China, plummeted after the invasion, indicating countries’ aversion to risk. The work was cited by the head of US export controls in Congressional testimony. Chorzempa spoke to CNN about his findings, the Washington Post devoted an article to his research, and the Wall Street Journal cited the work.
• Before the invasion, Jeffrey J. Schott questioned in a PIIE blog whether the threat of sanctions would deter Russian aggression in Ukraine. After the invasion, Schott was interviewed on the effectiveness of sanctions by many high-profile media outlets,  including a Wall Street Journal video interview and quoted in stories in ABC News, CNN, CNBC, NPR, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, Newsweek, Barron’s, and Vox.
• Jacob Funk Kirkegaard coauthored a paper calling for and designing a recovery plan for Ukraine based on the Marshall Plan for post-World War II Europe. His analysis was widely discussed in the media and many recommendations were included in the G7 statement in December on next steps in Ukraine, including setting up a G7 multiagency donor coordination platform involving the IMF.
• Anna Gelpern, Sean Hagan, and Maurice Obstfeld urged Ukraine’s creditors to defer repayments and outlined a framework to ease its economic burdens, which was adopted by official and private creditors. Obstfeld also recommended macroeconomic policies to put Ukraine’s economy on a sustainable path in a coauthored paper for VoxEU.
• As uncertainty roiled international markets, PIIE scholars’ work considered the food and energy implications of the tensions between Russia and the West. Before the invasion, Jeffrey J. Schott and Megan Hogan outlined Europe’s dependence on Russian energy in a blog and PIIE Chart. Following the invasion, Cullen S. Hendrix explained in the Washington Post how Russia’s actions would affect food and energy prices. The New York Times interviewed Maurice Obstfeld about the impact of global food price spikes on low-income populations. Vox interviewed Hendrix about the link between food costs and political unrest. Later, Steven Fries and Egor Gornostay showed how climbing energy prices were helping maintain Russian revenues despite Western sanctions, while Markus Brunnermeier called for a European boycott of Russian oil in an op-ed for Project Syndicate.
• The war forced Europe to balance sanctions, fiscal support, and monetary policy. Olivier Blanchard and Jean Pisani-Ferry weighed options for softening food and energy price shocks and tackling inflation in the third most-read Policy Brief of the year and a popular PIIE Chart.
• Russia’s reversion to a command-and-control approach to prop up the ruble, largely abandoned in the 1990s, was described by Patrick Honohan as monetary theater of the absurd, covered by the Wall Street Journal.
• Joshua Kirschenbaum and Nicolas Véron identified a gap in the EU’s financial sanctions regime in its reluctance to sanction Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank.

Multiple social welfare concerns drove the research agenda of many PIIE scholars in 2022, producing important analyses on inclusive growth, worker rights, food security, gender inequities, development assistance in war-torn countries, and health issues in the wake of COVID-19.

• Monica de Bolle has grown her reputation as a top expert on the Brazilian economy. She wrote about the economic and environmental problems plaguing Brazil for PIIE but, going much further, directly advised President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s economic team, helping them write a new Constitution amendment on fiscal reforms to address the country’s social and economic inequities. She also made big strides on social media, reaching over 200,000 Twitter followers, 84,000 YouTube subscribers, 8,000 Substack subscribers, and 8,000 TikTok followers.

• Research has shown women and racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in the economics profession, but Robert Schultz and Anna Stansbury also found US economics PhD recipients are less likely to be first-generation college graduates than those in other major disciplines. Their work was the most-viewed Working Paper of 2022 and, along with a follow-up PIIE Chart and op-ed in the Harvard Business Review, generated coverage from the Washington Post and led to Stansbury appearing on NPR Marketplace. The research also struck a chord on Stansbury’s Twitter account, garnering more than 750 retweets and 750K impressions.
• The male-dominated economics profession and fierce industry lobbying have produced economic policies that neglect nursing parents, worsening baby formula shortages in 2022. Katheryn (Kadee) Russ urged policymakers to better support breastfeeding parents in a piece for Columbia University’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue and discussed it on an episode of the Econofact podcast.

• Anna Stansbury has cemented her position as a leading expert on worker power. Her 2020 paper with Lawrence H. Summers on the Declining Worker Power Hypothesis was cited in a 2022 report from the US House Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth, while another paper from 2018 on productivity and worker pay appeared in Congress’s 2022 Economic Report of the President. She participated in a roundtable discussion on labor market competition with the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
• PIIE continued important work on gender disparities in labor markets around the world. Anna Stansbury, Karen Dynan, and Jacob Funk Kirkegaard’s Working Paper on gender inequality in the Korean labor market and related PIIE Chart expanded on previous research and led to a front-page interview, with  Kirkegaard, in Hankook Ilbo Daily. Pinelopi Goldberg also published an NBER paper with Gaurav Chiplunkar on barriers to female entrepreneurship that is being revised for Econometrica.
• North Korea may be preparing for another nuclear weapons test as the country faces a food crisis, demonstrating how the regime prioritizes its narrow goals to the detriment of public welfare, argued Marcus Noland in a PIIE blog and a paper for Asia and the Global Economy. The Guardian quoted Noland’s analysis of North Korea’s food insecurity crisis. He briefed senior US intelligence officials on the North Korean economy and trained over 150 intelligence analysts.
• Adnan Mazarei advised the United Nations Development Programme on macroeconomic issues and Afghanistan.
•  PIIE research at the intersection of health and economics identified vulnerabilities in public health systems and pandemic preparedness and key policy solutions. Monica de Bolle made the case for developing an Operation Warp Speed equivalent for COVID treatments; Katheryn (Kadee) Russ exposed the influence of US corporate lobbying on World Health Organization processes and established the University of California, Davis Trade Policy and Health Collection of documents to support research. Reinhilde Veugelers examined how the pandemic affected innovation in major global economies.