Trade Diversion

Happy new year! I’ve created a Twitter account for the blog. In addition to announcing new posts, @TradeDiversion will occasionally link to or retweet content that doesn’t warrant a full blog post. For example:

• RT @normative How Trade Policy Cost The X-Men Their Humanity http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2011/12/29/are_mutants_human.html
• No Surprises and No Momentum out of WTO Meeting — Kimberly Elliott |http://blogs.cgdev.org/globaldevelopment/2011/12/no-surprises-and-no-momentum-out-of-wto-meeting.php via @CGDev
• Norway slashes its $4.28 per kilo specific tariff in effort to alleviate massive butter shortage http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/1220/1224309294257.html

You can follow @TradeDiversion on Twitter or see the tweets in the column on the right of the blog’s frontpage, www.tradediversion.net.

I launched Trade Diversion in July 2005, six years and 1400 blog posts ago. The trade blogosphere has evolved quite a bit since then. Some authors have gone quiet; some domain registrations have lapsed. Some big names started blogging; some trade folks shifted focus to other topics. Some graduated from commenting on others’ posts to regularly producing their own; some are still going strong after all these years. My blogging has admittedly slowed as my research projects have proliferated.

On the whole, it seems that there’s been more exit than entry in the trade blogosphere over the last six years. Yes, Twitter emerged as a way to get trade policy news directly from trade reporters, but my reading list is shorter than it used to be. Have I missed new entrants? Whose blog should I be reading that isn’t already on my blogroll in the right sidebar? Please submit your recommendations in the comments section!

I think that the server switch was relatively seamless, so that those subscribing to http://www.tradediversion.net/atom.xml are still receiving the feed, but the proper URLs are now http://www.tradediversion.net/feed/atom (Atom) and http://www.tradediversion.net/feed (RSS), so it’d be best to update your subscription. Thanks for reading!

I’m the lone economics blogger amongst the twenty finalists competing for the 2008 Blogging Scholarship. Please show your support for Trade Diversion [and the rest of the economics blogosphere ] by voting for me. Thanks!

I’ve been having some technical difficulties over the last week or so, please bear with me.

I apologize for all the repeat posts today. Some internet bug ate all my posts from the last week, so I restored them today by repeating the entries.

Ben Muse has cemented his blogosphere dominance of Korea-US FTA coverage by setting up a blog dedicated to the trade deal.

My exams are next week, but after that I promise a return to actual blogging — more than mere links and excerpts!

In the meantime, you might enjoy:

Dan Drezner & others discussing global governance at Cato Unbound.

A Business Week story on measuring productivity gains in the presence of offshoring: “But new evidence suggests that shifting production overseas has inflicted worse damage on the U.S. economy than the numbers show. BusinessWeek has learned of a gaping flaw in the way statistics treat offshoring, with serious economic and political implications. Top government statisticians now acknowledge that the problem exists, and say it could prove to be significant.” [HT: Thoma]

VoxEU, a new portal from the CEPR featuring numerous top economists, including recent columns by Paul Collier & Tony Venables, Andrew K. Rose, Simon Evenett, and others.

The recent downturn in posting has been due to my upcoming exams. I’ll continue to post links and snippets over the next few weeks, but it’s unlikely that I’ll have time for lengthy pieces. Full-scale Trade Diversion will resume in mid-June. Thanks for reading.

It’s a new year – care to suggest a resolution that I should adopt for Trade Diversion? If you’ve got thoughts about topics I should (or shouldn’t cover) or other suggestions for the blog, please leave a comment or email me. Thanks!