Marketcraft: How Governments Make Markets Work – Joint Webinar Series

The States and Markets, and the Finance, Law, and Economics Working Groups are happy to host the first event from their joint webinar series, to be held on Thursday, March 1st, at 18:00 (CET). Those who have previously registered for the event are kindly asked to sign up again by clicking on https://ysd.ineteconomics.org/event/5a8aa3209138076e1aef0440

We are pleased to have Steven Vogel (Professor of Asian Studies and a Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley), presenting his recently published book entitled "Marketcraft: How Governments Make Markets Work". We are glad to have him with us at our kick-off event!

Summary:

Modern-day markets do not arise spontaneously or evolve naturally. Rather they are crafted by individuals, firms, and most of all, by governments. Thus “marketcraft” represents a core function of government comparable to statecraft. This talk builds upon the recognition that all markets are crafted, and then explores the implications of this simple observation for public policy and scholarly analysis. Policymakers often speak and act as if there were such a thing as a “free market” that thrives without governance. They are trapped by a false dichotomy of government versus market that impairs their ability to grasp the many facets of market governance. Meanwhile, even the most sophisticated analysts of market institutions sometimes fail to appreciate the full ramifications of their own arguments. They fall into the same linguistic traps as their intellectual adversaries, for example, or they fail to capture the extent to which market behavior is learned, not natural, and market operations are constructed, not free.

Bio

Steven K. Vogel is the Il Han New Professor of Asian Studies and a Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He specializes in the political economy of the advanced industrialized nations, especially Japan. He is the author of Marketcraft: How Governments Make Markets Work (2018), Japan Remodeled: How Government and Industry Are Reforming Japanese Capitalism (2006) and Freer Markets, More Rules: Regulatory Reform in Advanced Industrial Countries (1996), and the co-editor of The Political Economy Reader: Markets As Institutions (2008).

We look forward to seeing you online!

Cecilia, Christopher, and Cecilia