The Rhodes Center Podcast with Mark Blyth

On this episode Mark talks with political economist Brett Christophers. Brett’s a Professor at Uppsala University, and author of ‘Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?’. In the book, Brett explains how neoliberalism and financialization have led to an explosion of rent-seeking businesses in a variety of sectors, from natural resource extraction and finance, to tech and hos...

In this episode Mark talks with Boston University Professor Vivien Schmidt. Schmidt is an expert in the political economy of the European Union, and one of the keenest analysts of its institutions. Her new book, ‘Europe’s Crisis of Legitimacy: Governing by Rules and Ruling by Numbers in the Eurozone (2019),’ asks questions that each year grow more pressing. Why does the EU seem to have a constant...

On this episode Mark talks with Stephanie Kelton, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Stony Brook University and author of 'The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy'. Kelton is one of the leading experts on modern monetary theory (MMT), a view of macroeconomics that upends many long-held assumptions about federal government spending. Mark and Stephanie...

On this episode Mark talks with Martin Sandbu, a journalist at the Financial Times and author of 'The Economics of Belonging.' In addition to having a great title, the book provides a penetrating explanation for why so many people have come to feel so left behind in wealthy Western countries. Mark and Martin discuss the role economics plays in this discontent, and look at how radical economic poli...

On this episode Mark talks with Jonathan Hopkin, author of 'Anti-System Politics: The Crisis of Market Liberalism in Rich Democracies.' Unlike most analyses of populism and the breakdown of party systems, Hopkin argues that the way countries' have governed their markets in the last 30 years has shaped not just the rise of populism, but a form of politics opposed to market liberalism that spans the...

On this episode Mark talks with Alex Cooley and Dan Nexon, authors of 'Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order.' Scholars and pundits have been predicting the US's decline as the singular world power since at least the 1970s. Now, with President Trump's isolationist, nativist politics, many are saying this decline has finally arrived. Cooley and Nexon agree that the US's ex...

Megan Greene is an economist who actually sticks her head out the window, and takes real world observations as seriously as the models. For that reason (and many others), she’s currently a Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a Fellow at the Rhodes Center. On this episode Mark talks with Megan about what a post-Covid economy might look like, whether we’re already in a global Depre...

At a time when globalization is being contested by nationalists and battered by coronavirus, Mark talks to Samuel (Sandy) Zipp, Associate Professor of American Studies and Urban Studies at Brown, about the first American globalist: ex-Republican Presidential Candidate Wendell Willkie. Sandy is the author of 'The Idealist: Wendell Willkie's Wartime Quest to Build One World,' and as he describes in...

Something strange happened in late April: the price of oil went negative. This below-zero price tag didn’t last long, but it remains unusually cheap. And thanks to the coronavirus, it will likely stay that way for a while. In this episode Mark talks with Watson Associate Professor Jeff Colgan, an expert on the oil industry and the geopolitics that define it. They get into oil's current price fluct...

In this episode, Mark talks with Jazmin Sierra, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Notre Dame, who is a specialist in the political economies of Latin America. This interview was on the books before the coronavirus pandemic; Mark and Jazmin were planning to talk growth models in Latin America - that is, what bits of GDP the different economies tickle to generate growth. Now of course, the...

For decades, left-leaning political parties were defined by their advocacy for the working class. But in the 1990s that started to change, as left voters were asked to adapt to a more technocratic, market-driven world and parties themselves changed, becoming more technocratic. Parties changed internally with finance-friendly economists and political strategists taking over from trade union economi...

Between 2016 and 2018, relations between the United States and China went from focusing on engagement to competition to something bordering on threat management. If you think that's because of President Trump...you're wrong. On this episode Mark talks China, foreign policy, and the role of experts with David McCourt, Associate Professor of Sociology at University of California, Davis. McCourt has...

First, there was Bretton Woods. Then, globalized neoliberalism. On this episode of the Rhodes Center Podcast, Mark and his guests ask: what’s next? Is the ‘American order’ over? And if not, how will we know when it is? Mark talks with Ilene Grabel, Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, and Jonathan Kirshner, political scientist at Boston College...

On this episode Mark talks with Mario Rizzo, co-author of “Escaping Paternalism: Rationality, Behavioral Economics, and Public Policy.” In the book, Rizzo makes the case that economists, policy makers, and psychologists have developed an overly restrictive view of ‘rational behavior,’ and that this causes problems for institutions and governments seeking to promote certain types of behavior over o...

On this episode guest host and Watson Professor Nick Ziegler talks with Katharina Pistor, Professor at Columbia University Law School and author of “The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality”. They discuss how the law defines our economy, and generates vast amounts of capital for those who know how to wield it. Yet despite its centrality to our system, it remains a mystery to...

On this episode Mark talks with Benjamin Braun, Cornelia Woll, and Jennifer Heerwig about corporate governance in the digital age. As their discussion illustrates, behind the neutral phrase ‘corporate governance’ lie so many pressing economic, financial, and political issues: the growth of money in politics, the effects of some bankers being ‘too big to jail,’ and what it means for the world that...

There are uncertainties in our economy that go beyond measurable risk. Simply put: there are some things we can not know. So how do economic actors form expectations and decide how to act despite this existential uncertainty? On this episode Mark explores this question with Jens Beckert and Richard Bronk, editors of the new book ‘Uncertain Future: Imaginaries, Narratives, and Calculation in the Ec...

We live in a time of crises — economic turmoil, workplace disempowerment, unresponsive government, environmental degradation, social disintegration, and international rivalry. Paul Adler's book, 'The 99 Percent Economy: How Democratic Socialism Can Overcome the Crises of Capitalism,’ argues that these crises are destined to deepen unless we radically transform our economy. On this episode, Mark an...

On this episode, Mark Blyth talks with Kimberly Clausing, author of ‘Open: A Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital’ [https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674919334]. At a time when free trade is getting a bad rap from every direction, Clausing makes a case for why open borders and free trade are crucial to building a 21st-century economy that works for everyo...

On this episode, something a little different. Aidan Regan is an assistant professor at the School of Politics/International Relations at University College Dublin UCD, and has a podcast we think you’ll like. We think you’ll especially like this episode, since he recorded it while at a conference hosted by the Rhodes Center. His guest? Mark Blyth. He and Mark talk about how Mark first got interest...

Why do rich countries flirt with fiscal disaster? Zsófia Barta, author of In The Red: The Politics of Public Debt Accumulation in Developed Countries [https://www.press.umich.edu/9726915/in_the_red], challenges a long-held consensus by arguing that the problem of sustained, large-scale debt accumulation is an adjustment issue rather than a governance failure. On this episode Mark talks with Zsófia...

The era of globalization saw China emerge as the world's manufacturing titan. However, the 'made in China' model—with its reliance on cheap labor and thin profits—has begun to wane. On this episode of the Rhodes Center Podcast, Mark Blyth talks with Ling Chen, author of 'Manipulating Globalization: The Influence of Bureaucrats on Business in China' [https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25928] about...

The Rhodes Center podcast is brought to you by The Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance at Brown University. The show is hosted by Mark Blyth and Brendan Greeley. On this episode: the man behind the Rhodes Center, the indomitable William Rhodes. Brown class of '57, international banker, international public servant, and author of 'Banker to the World: Leadership Lessons from the F...

Discussion with Mark Blyth, Political Economist at Brown's Watson Institute. Associated Watson Institute lecture: [https://youtu.be/MS1eF1F4YDQ] Marco Buti has been Director-General for Economic and Financial Affairs at the European Commission since December 2008, after a 6-month period as acting Director-General. After studies at the Universities of Florence and Oxford, Mr Buti joined the Europea...

Watch accompanying talk at the Watson Institute at Brown University: [https://youtu.be/R-Dxrs7dj0w] Central bankers have emerged from the financial crisis as the third great pillar of unelected power alongside the judiciary and the military. They pull the regulatory and financial levers of our economic well-being, yet unlike democratically elected leaders, their power does not come directly from t...