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It hurts the laggards and benefits the smart ones- the smart ones will take the advantages and not say anything, and the laggards will complain.
— Charles Wyplosz
Leading economist specializing in European monetary integration and financial crises.
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I have never seen a good case for protectionism, but I can see a case for slowing down trade integration because it can be highly disruptive to domestic firms, markets and people's income in the short-run.
— Charles Wyplosz
Leading economist specializing in European monetary integration and financial crises.
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Every country that has managed to raise its standards of living has somehow integrated itself commercially with the rest of the world, it's probably a necessary condition.
— Charles Wyplosz
Leading economist specializing in European monetary integration and financial crises.
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The case for free trade is much stronger than the case for free capital movement. The case for free capital movement is weak, because financial markets suffer from very serious failures (right now is a nice example of that).
— Charles Wyplosz
Leading economist specializing in European monetary integration and financial crises.
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The general theory that integration is good for better allocation of resources is not the big thing, the big thing is that it makes it harder for governments to play with financial markets.
— Charles Wyplosz
Leading economist specializing in European monetary integration and financial crises.
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What I believe is the bigger benefit; is that it makes it much more difficult for governments to trick the domestic financial system to favour particular borrowers, to milk savers through variable interest rates and so forth.
— Charles Wyplosz
Leading economist specializing in European monetary integration and financial crises.
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When countries integrate themselves, they provide 'favours' resulting in wider and better opportunities for all and similarly, borrowers can tap the world pool of savings and they are supposed to benefit from that. That is the theory, though empirically, there is little evidence of these effects.
— Charles Wyplosz
Leading economist specializing in European monetary integration and financial crises.