June 30, 2020
Forum Fellow Beatrice Magistro winner of Presidential Dissertation Grant
Beatrice Magistro received the University of Washington Presidential Dissertation Grant, which is highly prestigious and coveted. She follows two other former Forum participants, Nora Webb Williams and David Lopez, who earned this distinction in 2018.
Magistro & Wittstock Post covered by Marginal Revolution
Tyler Cowen and company at the Marginal Revolution showed the Forum some love and brought out scores of comments; in the original post, Magistro & Wittstock evaluate the facts, logic and evidence behind the idea that immigrants take jobs from native born Americans and the wisdom of the Trump Administration’s recent restrictions on visas.
June 27, 2020
What would evidence-based policy look like if we took it seriously?, by Victor Menaldo
One of the goals of the Political Economy Forum is quite simple: to promote evidence-based policy. What does that mean exactly? My take is that it includes several components: Policy should be informed by facts, logic, and evidence. Policymakers should perform cost-benefit analysis before making decisions. When formulating policy, policymakers should not…
June 25, 2020
Zero-Sum Thinking on Immigration Will Make America Poorer, by Beatrice Magistro and Nicolas Wittstock
On June 23rd 2020, President Donald Trump imposed restrictions on several categories of visas for foreign workers until the end of the year. The proclamation his administration issued explaining this decision suspended the issuance of H-1B visas for high-skilled labor; H-2B visas for workers not critical to America’s food supply chain; J-1 visas issued for purposes of…
June 24, 2020
Where do good governments come from?, by Yu Sasaki
Where do good governments come from? An age old question, it remains pressing today. In countries such as Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen multiple armed groups have been vying for political authority for years on end. The result: societies that lack a functioning state and, thus, societies wanting of security, infrastructure, and basic services. Rich countries…
June 20, 2020
Why We Launched This Website and our New Plans
For several years now James Long (UW Political Science), Victor Menaldo (UW Political Science), and Rachel Heath (UW Economics) have been meeting every other Friday along with other UW faculty members, graduate students and undergrads (from across campus), and occasionally invited faculty from other universities. We do this under the auspices of the Forum on…
June 18, 2020
New Working Paper by Victor Menaldo
Do Patents Foster International Technology Transfer? Evidence from Spanish Steelmaking, 1850-1930. Why do developing countries protect the intellectual property rights (IPR) of foreign inventors? Does this facilitate technology transfer from the industrial frontier? This paper addresses those questions by telling the story of when and how technology was transferred through patent licensing to Spanish iron…
