Best 6 quotes of Dani Rodrik on MyQuotes

Unlike national markets, which tend to be supported by domestic regulatory and political institutions, global markets are only 'weakly embedded'. There is no global lender of last resort, no global safety net, and of course, no global democracy. In other words, global markets suffer from weak governance, and are therefore prone to instability, inefficiency, and weak popular legitimacy.

What determines success in industrial policy is not the ability to pick winners but the capacity to let the losers go.

A politician who represents the interests primarily of economic elites must find other means of appealing to the masses. Such alternatives are provided by the politics of nationalism, sectarianism, and identity.

If economics were only about profit maximization, it would be just another name for business administration. It is a social discipline, and society has other means of cost accounting besides market prices.

The world economy has lived so far under a set of ideas and institutions emanating from the advanced economies of the West. The United States gave us the doctrine of liberal, rule-based multilateralism; the system had many blemishes, but these served only to highlight the lofty principles against which, by and large, the regime operated. From Europe came democratic values, social solidarity, and for all its current problems, the most impressive feat of institutional engineering of the century, the European Union.

The world is better served by syncretic economists and policymakers who can hold multiple ideas in their heads than by ‘one-handed’ economists who promote one big idea regardless of context.