Henry Farrell

The Folly of Decoupling From China – with Abraham Newman

On May 14, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to break the United States’ economic relationship with China. “There are many things we could do,” he told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo. “We could cut off the whole relationship. Now if you did, what would happen? You’d save $500 billion.” It was Trump’s most extreme anti-China rhetoric to date, but it wasn’t out of step with the mood in Washington. Both Republicans and Democrats agree that China has transformed from a competitor into an adversary, and perhaps even an enemy.

As tensions have mounted as a result of the

Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, “The Folly of Decoupling From China,” Foreign Affairs (online), June 3, 2020.

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The result of all this is that policy discourse about the United States, China,and technology has careened from one pathology to another: The cheeryglobalism of a decade ago has given way to today’s diffuse paranoia. Nowthe national security conversation is almost exclusively focused on theimpossible task of severing the ties of technological interdependence,with the only ...
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Trust, Institutions and Institutional Evolution: Industrial Districts and the Social Capital Hypothesis – with Jack Knight

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Much current work in the social sciences seeks to understand the effects of trust and social capital on economic and political outcomes. However, the sources of trust remain unclear. In this article, the authors articulate a basic theory of the relationship between institutions and trust. The authors apply this theory to industrial districts, geographically concentrated ...
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