Politics and economics

The increasingly prominent role of China in the world economy has led to widespread discussions concerning the balance of power, trade relations, and economic development. This column presents a new ‘friends and enemies’ model which is used to show that significant growth and welfare effects have stemmed from China’s shifting role, and that changes in trading clusters have varied across different sectors. The findings also suggest that as countries become less economically friendly in terms of the welfare effects of their productivity growth, they also become less politically friendly in terms of foreign policy. 

It is often argued that democracy is the least imperfect form of government mainly because of the existence of a ‘self-correcting’ mechanism stemming from voice and accountability embedded in democracies. Using text analysis from about a billion newspaper articles in 28 languages, this column shows that the intensity of reform chatter increases during economic downturns and that the increase is more significant in democracies. During downturns, democracies appear to benefit disproportionately from changing popular attitudes translating into actual reforms.