The 2019 Meade lecture will be given by Professor Elhanan Helpman (Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade at Harvard) on Tuesday 5 March 2019 at 5:30pm in the Yusuf Hamied Theatre.

We characterize trade policies that result from political competition when assessments of well- being include both material and psychosocial components. The material component reflects, as usual, satisfaction from consumption. Borrowing from social identity theory, we take the psychosocial component as combining the pride and self-esteem an individual draws from the status of groups with which she identifies and a dissonance cost she bears from identifying with those that are different from herself. In this framework, changes in social identification patterns that may result, for example, from increased income inequality or heightened racial and ethnic tensions, lead to pronounced changes in trade policy. We analyze the nature of these policy changes.

The lecture will be based on a paper with the same title, joint with Gene Grossman from Princeton University

A recording of the lecture can listened below. You can also view the accompanying presentation notes while listening to the recording. These can be found here.