Kuznets 2026: Trade Policy and Exchange Rate Reform: A Look Back at History

Douglas Irwin (Dartmouth) delivered the 35th Simon Kuznets Memorial Lecture, “Trade Policy and Exchange Rate Reform: A Look Back at History,” on Thursday, March 26, 2026, hosted by the Yale Economic Growth Center (EGC). Irwin is the John French Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. The globalized world of today was created in the 1980s and 1990s when dozens of developing countries - most notably China and India, but many others as well - opened up to world trade and investment. Dartmouth economist Douglas Irwin argues that this sweeping trade liberalization was not driven by pressure from interest groups, as standard accounts contend. Rather, he focuses on a neglected factor - the need for foreign exchange reserves (and the rise of technocratic economists in policymaking positions) as key factors behind these changes. He will explore how exchange rate policy was critical to the trade policy change of the period and how integration increased economic growth and sharply reduced global poverty. Hosted annually by EGC since 1987, the Simon Kuznets Memorial Lecture features a prominent economist speaking on issues in economic development. The series was founded by EGC Faculty members in 1986 to honor Simon Kuznets, the famous Belarusian-American economist who helped establish EGC in 1961 and went on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics.