Recent initiatives to hold back cross-border mergers and acquisitions for ‘strategic’ reasons have made headline news. We discuss whether the initiatives may mark the start of a new protectionist era. We argue that standard globalization indicators show no such signs. However, an increasing divergence of incomes and increased insecurity might raise resistance against the globalization process. ...

By the early 1980s, a number of distinguished economists had amassed compelling evidence that outward-oriented trade policies were far more likely than protectionism to lead to economic growth. The evidence was contained in two multi-country research projects-one at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), led by Ian Little and others, and the other at the National Bure...

Too often, the word ‘openness’ has been used to embrace the entire scope of policies and outcomes that characterise a healthy economy. But this makes ‘openness’ unachievable from a policy point of view. Here, I use the word to refer narrowly to an open policy stance, the opposite of protectionism. Defined this way, ‘openness’ does not, unfortunately, guarantee growth, and in some circumstances ...

The first policy implication of the diffusion of a Market-Driven Management approach is the same as the spreading of globalization, i.e. the obsolescence of industrial policies as traditionally designed and managed by Nation-States with the established toolbox of protectionism and subsidies, picking ‘national champions’, etc. The growing asymmetry between the physical jurisdiction of political ...

Acquisitions, mergers and other business agreements are facing increasing regulatory scrutiny, even when they are among firms domiciled outside the territory of the regulatory authorities. Some noteworthy recent examples involve mergers between American firms that were prohibited by regulators from the European Commission. Reciprocation by regulators from other jurisdictions seems a likely futu...

Today, there is a growing fear of resurfacing protectionism, from United States’ trade-war with China, to UK’s Brexit, the less known trade-restricting measures adopted by countries globally. The General Agreement on Trade & Tariff (GATT), superseded World Organisation (WTO) since 1995, rendered classic forms protectionism such as tariffs obsolete. However, it did not defeat protectionism; ...