When it comes to governing our economy, estimates rule the day. We want to know what effect a policy might have on the government’s budget, on economic growth, on employment…in the next 1 year, 5 years, 10 years…you get the idea. If you want to make (or critique) public policy, you better have numbers to back it up. 

To get those types of estimates, economists and politicians often rely on institutions like the Office for Budget Responsibility in the UK, or the Congressional Budget Office in the United States. As a result, their estimates and fiscal projections form crucial data points in our modern politics and policymaking. 

We like to think that these estimates and projections (not to mention, the people who make them) come from somewhere outside of our partisan politics. That while our values might be debatable, the numbers, at least, aren’t.

But, as Mark Blyth’s guest on this episode explains: that idea is a fantasy, and to the extent it obscures the values and politics that are baked into organizations like the Office of Budget Responsibility, it’s a dangerous one. 

On this episode, Mark Blyth talks with Ben Clift, author of “The Office for Budget Responsibility and the Politics of Technocratic Economic Governance.” In it, he pulls back the curtain on Britain's Office for Budget Responsibility, and reveals the hidden processes and ideologies that shape the estimates and projections that come out of it. In doing so, he shows how the OBR – and other institutions like it – are much more political than they appear. 

Learn more about and purchase “The Office for Budget Responsibility and the Politics of Technocratic Economic Governance”

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When you think of high-end luxury commodities, you might imagine yachts, private jets, or even whole islands. But in the last few years, another commodity has started to receive a lot of attention from the world’s wealthiest people: citizenship. 

With enough money, people can buy their way into becoming a citizen of a growing list of countries around the world. While this trend has garnered lots of attention in the last few years, as our guest on this episode explains, there’s so much more to the story than meets the eye. 

Kristin Surak is a sociologist and author of the new book “The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires.” In it, she pulls back the curtain on this rarified luxury market — who’s buying, who’s selling, and the complex web of middlemen that make it all work. 

On this episode, Mark Blyth talks with Surak about what might be called the “citizenship industrial complex”’ and what it says about our global economy. 

• Learn more about and purchase “The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires”
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The history of international politics since 1945. The role of values in the global economy. The future of America’s relationship with China. All three of these would be ambitious topics for a work of political economy. But combining them? That’s not for the faint of heart.  

However, that’s exactly what Sir Paul Tucker has done in his new book, “Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured World Order”. 

Tucker is a former central banker, and a current research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. In this episode, Mark Blyth talks about the book with Paul and political economist Aditi Sahasrabudde. 

Learn more about and purchase “Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured World Order”

Watch Sir Paul Tucker’s recent talk at the Rhodes Center

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One concept that comes up a lot on the Rhodes Center Podcast: the idea of the 'free market’.

The idea, as you might know it, begins with John Locke, is fashioned fully by Adam Smith, and is delivered to us gift-wrapped (after some delays) by the likes of Hayek and Friedman in the mid 20th century.

But as our guest on this episode explains, the idea of the free market is hardly so straightforward. Jacob Soll is a professor of philosophy, history, and accounting at the University of Southern California, and in his book “Free Market: The History of an Idea,” he begins way back in ancient Rome, stops in 17th-century France with Louis XIV’s minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, and, on the way to the present, barely mentions Adam Smith at all. 

No matter what you think of when you hear the words ‘free market’, Jacob's incredibly informative – and highly readable – history will make you see the concept in a whole new light. 

Learn more about and purchase Jacob’s Book “Free Market: The History of an Idea”

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On the last episode of the podcast, Mark talked with two experts regarding the Inflation Reduction Act, and the political and logistical challenges of accelerating a ‘Green Transition’ in the US. 

Which makes for an interesting comparison to our topic today.

Because these days, when people want to critique how slow and ineffective the US government can be, they often compare it to another country – one that we tell ourselves is where big government projects happen faster and better than almost anywhere: China.

But as Iza Ding, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh, explains to Mark on this episode, China’s government might not be quite as dominant and proficient as we think. And nowhere is this more clear than at the local level, as Iza explores in her recent book, “The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China.”

Even though the book focuses on aspects of environmental governance like conservation and pollution mitigation, her conclusions are far-reaching. Primarily, the idea that even so-called strong states have weaknesses, and when they are asked to address them, they often ‘perform’ the task of governing in informative and surprising ways. 

Learn more about and purchase Iza Ding's book "The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China".

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Over the last two years, if you had asked Mark Blyth if the Biden administration would ever do anything meaningful to fight climate change, he’d have said “no.” These feelings only got stronger in 2021, after the Democrats failed to pass their first big attempt at climate legislation, known as ‘Build Back Better.’

But then, something changed. The Inflation Reduction Act became law. And despite the name, it’s a decarbonization bill, and a better one than Mark ever thought we were going to get. (It might also reduce inflation, but that’s for another episode).

In this episode, Mark talks with two experts about why climate legislation was finally able to get passed in the United States, and what it means for the country and the planet. 

Tim Sahay is a physicist, Senior Policy Manager of Green New Deal Network, and Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. Ted Fertik is a historian, and Senior Strategist for Policy and Research with the Working Families Party. As they both see it, this bill has the potential not just to curb the worst of climate change, but to transform our society. 

Watch Mark, Tim, and Ted’s recent event at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. 

(An updated slide deck for presentation can be found here.)

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In the last few years, globalization has gotten an increasingly a bad rap. Whether because of increasing geopolitical tensions over high end computers chips, or the realization that when you outsource your manufacturing base it’s quite hard to make things in a hurry (see: the pandemic), people across the political spectrum are calling time on ‘make it there, ship it here.’ 

It seems that politicians of all stripes want to roll back global supply chains and ‘friendshore’ all our wants and needs. The problem with doing so however lies at the level of the firm, as has recently been pointed out by Jonas Nahm. And for a number of reasons, it won’t be an easy transition. 

Jonas is an Assistant Professor of Energy, Resources, and Environment at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and author of the recent and excellent book Collaborative Advantage: Forging Green Industries in the New Global Economy. 

On this episode, Mark talks with Jonas about all the ways that private firms, domestic institutions, and national industrial policies mesh together to produce outcomes that are more than the sum of their parts. 

Watch Jonas’s presentation at the Rhodes Center.

Learn more about and purchase Collaborative Advantage: Forging Green Industries in the New Global Economy.

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

This episode is a little different than the type of conversation you normally have on the show. 

Last year, Mark spoke with Oded Galor about his book The Journey of Humanity, a long-run take on why humanity changed so little for so long, and then all of sudden changed tremendously, mostly for the better. 

It’s a fascinating idea, but of course nobody actually experiences that long-run journey, or compares their daily life to distant ancestors. People typically think on the much shorter timescale of a lifetime, maybe a generation or two. 

At that scale, for many people in America today, it can seem like much of life has gotten worse, and are continuing to do so. 

Put another way: it looks like the American Dream is dead.

But is that true? What does it mean for a dream to die, anyway? And if it is dead, is there a way to revive it? 

These sound like questions for a philosopher. 

Someone who has thought about this a great deal is Josh Preiss. He’s a philosopher, Professor at Minnesota State University, and author of Just Work For All: The American Dream in the 21st Century. 

On this episode, Mark talks with Josh about the ideas behind what we call ‘The American Dream,’ and looks at the reality behind its decline: what’s gotten worse for who, and what’s needed to make things better. 

Learn more about and purchase Josh Preiss’s book.

Watch Josh’s talk at the Rhodes Center.

Find more information about all our episodes, including transcripts, on our website. 

On this episode Mark talks with Oded Galor, Professor of Economics at Brown University, and author of the new book The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality. 

In this book Oded survey’s 200,000 years of human history to create a theory for why societies and economies grew so slowly for so long – and why, starting about 200 years ago, that began to change very rapidly. 

It’s a sweeping history that puts the work of many influential economists into a new light – from Adam Smith to Karl Marx to Paul Romer. But Oded’s story is about much more than economics. It’s about technology, geography, psychology, and politics. In short, it’s about the nature of humanity. 

Mark and Oded discuss all of this, as well as how – as we stumble through a global pandemic and catastrophic climate change – we can grow in ways that benefit us all.

Learn more about and purchase Oded’s book The Journey of Humanity.

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There’s a standard story economists and historians use to explain the global economy over the last 100 years: there was the gold standard, which gave way to the Bretton Woods system, which gave way to “neoliberal globalization”. 

But on this episode of the Rhodes Center Podcast, Mark talks with someone whose work challenges this story by attacking its foundational myth with deep archival work. 

James Ashely Morrison is an associate professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and author of the new book England’s Cross of Gold: Keynes, Churchill, and the Governance of Economic Beliefs. 

In it, he recounts the fight over Britain’s return to the Gold Standard after World War I, and comes to a bold conclusion: there never really was a “gold standard” – at least, not as we understand it. As James makes vividly clear, the “gold standard” was always more of an idea about a perfect state of the world, rather than an economic reality. As such, fights over it have always been less about actual monetary policy, and more about how people believe the economy is supposed to work. 

James’ work not only adds depth and nuance to this misunderstood turning point in 20th century economics. As he and Mark discuss, it also forces us to reconsider so many of the more contemporary stories we’ve been told about how our economy works, and why. 

Learn more about James’ book England’s Cross of Gold: Keynes, Churchill, and the Governance of Economic Beliefs. 

Watch the talk James’ gave at the Rhodes Center this Spring.  

From 2019 to 2021, Frances Haugen worked as a Product Manager in Facebook’s Civic Integrity Department. During that time she got an inside view into how Facebook’s algorithms are deliberately designed to influence its users. She also saw something deeply worrying: that this influence was often used to grow Facebook’s profits at the expense of users' safety and wellbeing. 

In 2021 she anonymously leaked tens of thousands of internal documents to the Wall Street Journal. Since then she’s testified before Congress on the matter, and helped start a global movement to better understand and regulate Big Tech. 

On this episode Mark talks with Frances about her experience whistleblowing on one of the world’s most powerful companies, and what she thinks we need to do to create social media platforms that are compatible with a functioning democracy. 

Learn more about and listens to the Watson Institute's other podcasts.

In the last few years we’ve seen critiques of free trade from across the political spectrum. Trump focused on the US-China trade imbalance, while the left focuses its ire on free trade agreements themselves. 

It’s, of course, not the first time that protectionist ideas have found currency in a globalizing economy.  

In the late 18th century a theory known as ‘neomercantilism’ began to thrive in a number of western countries. It was a theory, most famously espoused by the German thinker Friedrich List, that focused on protectionism and government activism to create an industrial state. But as Eric Helleiner, a political science professor at the University of Waterloo explores in his new book ‘The Neomercantilists,’ this movement did not start in Europe and diffuse out to the rest of the world. Rather, it was a truly global phenomenon, with intellectual roots springing up everywhere from Africa to Asia to Latin America.

On this episode Mark talks with Eric about the neglected intellectual traditions that gave rise to varieties of neomercantilism. Eric’s analysis not only helps explain the protectionist revivals of today. It also challenges Western readers’ assumptions about how economic theory develops, and how economic ideas gain influence around the world. 

Watch Eric’s live conversation with Mark here. 

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Listeners of the Rhodes Center Podcast have probably heard of companies like Black Rock, State Street and Vanguard. You’ve also probably heard how, through ETFs and other investment products, these types of investment firms own a staggering share of the world’s biggest companies (20-25% of the S&P 500 by some estimates). 

But in this episode, you’ll hear about a whole other side of asset management; one that’s more opaque, and possibly much more influential (and corrosive) to our daily lives.  

Brett Christophers is a geographer and professor at Uppsala University’s Institute for Housing and Urban Research, and author of the new book “Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World.” In it, he explains how asset management companies like Blackstone and Macquarie Asset Management do more than passively own shares. Over the last few decades, they've begun to invest in and actively run a growing portion of our infrastructure and essential services: hospitals, care homes, water treatment plants, bridges and even parking meters. 

On this episode, he talks with Mark Blyth about the economics of this new subspecies of asset management, and how they’ve begun to reshape our society, economy and planet in ways we don’t fully understand. 

Learn about and purchase “Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World”

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On this episode Mark talks with Dr. Fiona Hill about her new book There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century. A foreign policy expert and key witness in President Trump’s first impeachment trial, she reflects on growing up in the deindustrializing North of England in the 1980s and how that upbringing attuned her to developments in both Russia and America that we are coping with today. This talk was recorded in late February 2021. 

Learn more about and purchase There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

Watch Fiona Hill’s full talk at the Rhodes Center on YouTube. 

The Rhodes Center Podcast explores the most important issues in finance and economics through straightforward, candid conversations with the world’s leading experts. The show is hosted by Mark Blyth, political economist and Director of the Rhodes Center, at the Watson Institute at Brown University. 

On this episode Mark talks with Manuela Moschella about the recent transformations to central bank policy and orthodoxy. Central banking used to be straightforward - fix short term rates and get price stability. 2008 changed that. Engineering asset price instability and massive bailouts became the norm and, despite all that, deflation, not inflation became the problem. The Fed and the ECB were late in waking up to that fact, and just when they did, COVID hit and inflation came back. So Mark asks Manuela: what is a central banker to do? 

Manuela is an Associate Professor of International Political Economy at the Scuola Normale Superiore and Associate Fellow at the Europe Programme at Chatham House. 

Watch Manuela’s talk at the Rhodes Center. 

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

On this episode Mark talks with Elizabeth Popp Berman, Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan, and author of Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in US Public Policy. 

In it, she explains how in the middle of the 20th century a new kind of economic thinking took hold among policymakers at all levels of government. It replaced bold visions of justice and equality with a more technocratic style, one whose goals could be summed up in one word: efficiency. 

Over the last half century this quest for efficiency has guided policies in everything from public education to defense to environmental management. It’s dominance is also reflected in the wild proliferation of MPA programs that exist in American universities today that have cost-benefit analysis at their heart. 

Elizabeth and Mark discuss where this thinking came from, and why it appealed (and continues to appeal) to so many policymakers. They also talk about what’s lost in this focus on efficiency, and why it isn’t the panacea its advocates claim. 

Watch Elizabeth's talk at the Rhodes Center.

Learn more about the Watson Institute's other podcasts.

On this episode Mark talks  with Ron Schatz, Professor of History at Wesleyan University and author of the new book The Labor Board Crew. In it, Ron  tells the story of a groups of young professionals who, during WWII, took on roles that hadn’t really existed before: they were hired as mediators, recruited by the government to help end strikes at a time when the US government felt the country couldn’t afford to have factories sitting empty. 

They weren’t union organizers, businesspeople, or politicians. They were mostly economists and lawyers. They were also quite young. But they were very good at this new kind of job. And the techniques they pioneered changed not only labor relations in the US, but how conflicts were resolved in settings ranging from higher education to international relations. 

Learn more about and purchase “The Labor Board Crew”

Watch the video of Ron’s virtual visit to the Rhodes Center

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On this episode: a conversation with Claire Priest. Claire is a historian and Professor at Yale Law School, and author of the book Credit Nation: Property Laws and Institutions in Early America. 

In it, she explains how even before the United States became a country, laws prioritizing access to credit set colonial America apart from the rest of the world. This reality didn’t just shape colonial economies -- it was also a key factor in the explosive growth of American capitalism in the nineteenth-century.

This episode was guest-hosted by Rhodes Center Fellow Ann Daly. She's a historian, Assistant Professor of History at Mississippi State University, and an expert on the economics of the American colonies. 

Watch Claire Priest's talk at the Rhodes Center.

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

The Rhodes Center Podcast explores some of the most important and complex issues in the world of finance and economics through straightforward, candid conversations. The show is hosted by Mark Blyth, political economist and Director of the Rhodes Center at Brown University. 

On this episode Mark talks with Zsófia Barta and Alison Johnston, authors of the upcoming book Rating Politics: How Sovereign Credit Ratings Reward and Penalize Political and Policy Choices in Prosperous Developed Countries. They explain how agencies like Moody’s, Fitch, and Standard and Poor’s go about rating sovereign credit, and the surprising role a country’s internal politics play in the process.

Zsófia Barta is an associate professor of Political Science at the University at Albany SUNY.

Alison Johnston is an associate professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Oregon State University. 

Watch Zsófia and Alison’s full Rhodes Center talk.

On this episode Mark talks with economist and Brown Professor John Friedman. They discuss why decreasing income inequality is good for economic growth, the challenge of assessing inflation risk on the heels of a global pandemic, and whether 'Bidenomics' is an evolution of Democratic economic policy or a genuine paradigm shift.

You can watch the full video of this conversation here.

Most discussions about AI and the future of work tend to go in one of two directions: either excitement for a ‘post-work’ utopia, or alarm over the end of work. On this episode Mark talks with Aaron Benanav, an economic historian, postdoctoral researcher at Humboldt University of Berlin, and author of ‘Automation and the Future of Work,’ about why this whole debate sort of misses the point.

You can learn more about and purchase Aaron's book here.

On this episode Mark talks with Albena Azmanova, IWM Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Human Studies in Vienna and author of ‘Capitalism on Edge: How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change Without Crisis or Utopia’. In the book, Albena explains how precarity (not inequality) is the central driver of our current political, economic, and social woes. Mark and Albena explore the roots of economic precarity, the reasons it’s more dangerous and destabilizing than inequality alone, and why addressing it will require mixing tried-and-true economic policies with a radical rethinking of how our economy is structured.

You can learn more about Albena Azmanova's book here.

On this episode Mark talks with economist Pavlina Tcherneva about a policy proposal that’s bubbling under in the US policy debate: the creation of a federal jobs guarantee. Pavlina is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Bard College and author of 'The Case for a Job Guarantee.' As Pavlina describes it, a federal jobs guarantee isn’t just a good idea; in the face of our economic, environmental, and epidemiological crises, it may be a necessary one.

You can watch her virtual visit to the Rhodes Center here.

You can learn more about and purchase her book here.

On this podcast, you’ve heard from a range of experts about the policies and politics of decarbonization. But what does the fight against climate change look like from the business side?

Sophie Purdom is the Founder and Managing Partner of Planeteer Capital, a venture capital fund that invests in early-stage climate technology companies. She also writes Climate Tech VC, an industry newsletter that goes deep into the business side of the green transition. 

On this episode, Sophie Purdom talks with a special guest host for the Rhodes Center Podcast, political scientist and director of the Watson Institute’s Climate Solutions Lab Jeff Colgan. They talk about the world of “climate tech,” as it’s known in the startup community, how the industry started, where it’s going, and what it can teach us about the relationship between private enterprise and the global fight against climate change.

Learn more about and subscribe to Sophie Purdom’s newsletter, Climate Tech VC

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On this episode Mark talks with Thea Riofrancos. Thea is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Providence College, and author of two essential reads on the challenges facing global left movements today: 'Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador' and 'A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal.'

Mark and Thea discuss why the Left in Ecuador fractured under the progressive Correa government starting in 2007, and the role resource extraction played in those divisions. As Riofrancos explains, this intra-left conflict isn’t just about political strategy or economic inclinations -- it’s also about competing visions of modernity, and it has lessons for progressive movements around the world.

You can learn more about 'Resource Radicals' and 'A Planet to Win' here and here.

You can learn more about the Watson Institute’s full network of podcasts here.

On this episode Mark talks with Luke Messac, physician, historian, and author of ‘No More to Spend: Neglect and the Construction of Scarcity in Malawi's History of Health Care.’ They discuss how Malawi’s politics over the last century has - like in many countries - been defined by a rhetoric of scarcity and austerity. As Luke shows though, this scarcity is more often the product of political decisions rather than structural pressures, with devastating consequences for the country’s healthcare system. If you’re interested in how geopolitics and economics affect the health of nations, this is the book (and podcast) for you.

You can learn more about and purchase Luke’s book here.

On this episode Mark talks with economist Dan Davies about his book ‘Lying for Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of the World.’ Dan and Mark look at some of the great scams of modern history to explore how fraud works, why it persists, and what it can teach us about modern economies.

In 2015, economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton published a paper that revealed something startling: an increase in mortality rates in the United States among white middle-aged men and women between the years of 1999 and 2013. 

They published a book in 2020 that aimed to explain the trend, which they attributed to — among other factors — economic stagnation, social isolation, and the opioid crisis. The book, titled “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism,”, caused a stir inside and outside the field of economics, as people tried to make sense of America’s economy and society in the Trump years. 

On this episode, Rhodes Center Director Mark Blyth talks with Deaton about his newest book “Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality,” which takes a broader view of the issues brought up in “Deaths of Despair.” They explore the pervasiveness of inequality in America, how it relates to the “deaths of despair” phenomenon, and why the field of economics often seems blind to the most pressing issues facing individuals and communities.

Learn more about and purchase “Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality”

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This is part three in our companion series to the book “Diminishing Returns: The New Politics of Growth and Stagnation” (co-edited by Mark Blyth, Lucio Baccaro and Jonas Pontusson). 

On this episode, Mark talks with four contributors for the book: Alex Reisenbichler, Aidan Regan, Oddný Helgadóttir, and Jonas Nahm. They look at case studies in a handful of countries, as well as some of the cross-cutting trends affecting all growth models across the world. They explore the role of finance and politics in growth models, and how the climate crisis is making us rethink this all even further. 

Learn more about and purchase “Diminishing Returns: The New Politics of Growth and Stagnation”

Listen to part one of this series

Listen to part two of this series

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