Weekend Links

Happy Veterans/Remembrance/Armistice Day everybody. Sarah and I are headed to Boston for the annual International Political Economy Society conference this weekend, and I'm not sure how much time and internet access we'll have, so blogging might be light. (If you'll be at the conference be sure to say hi.) Hopefully we'll have some interesting new research to discuss next week. In the meantime, here's some stuff I've found interesting lately.

-- James Vreeland and Raj Desai have a paper encouraging the IMF to embrace regionalism.

-- The Economist discusses potential replacements for Bretton Woods 2.

-- The Economist also put together this handy interactive "global debt clock" tool to visualize sovereign debt over time. In 2006 global sovereign debt was $27tn. In 2010 it's nearly $41tn, and that's expected to increase to $43tn next year. (The Economist also has a "Daily Chart" blog from which this was taken. It's usually interesting stuff.)

-- U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing American cotton growers and Brazilian cotton growers. A classic collective action problem.

-- I've been thinking about the implications of this for IR and IPE for a few weeks now.

-- Der Spiegel is not very bullish on the U.S., and therefore is nervous about the global economy.

-- The E.U. is going to bail out Ireland?

-- Robert Kaplan wins the "Grand Strategy of the Week" award this week.