May 3rd, 2019,  6:30 p.m.

Radiokulturhaus, Argentinierstraße 30A, 1040 Vienna

Dani Rodrik: Karl Polanyi and Globalization´s Wrong Turn

Comments by Kari Polanyi Levitt, Mc Gill University/Montreal and Ayse Bugra, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul

Globalization took a wrong turn when it overlooked Polanyi’s central insight that markets need to be embedded in institutions, both for effectiveness and legitimacy. The brief period of Bretton Woods-style globalization in the decades following World War II was more Polanyiesque in so far it did not question the centrality of national economic management and regulation. Constructing a viable globalization will require going back to that central insight, though the results are unlikely to look much like the Bretton Woods regime.

Dani Rodrik is an economist whose research covers globalization, economic growth and development, and political economy. He is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He was previously the Albert O. Hirschman Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2013-2015). Professor Rodrik is currently President-Elect of the International Economic Association. His newest book is Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy (2017).