Out of curiosity, has anyone else read the article by J. David Richardson, "Income Inequality and Trade: How to Think, What to Conclude" in the latest JEP? Doesn't it rank as one of the most explicit instances of neoclassical bankruptcy? Richards gives us a simple 2x2x2 trade model with no money, no capital account, automatic and instantaneously clearing markets, and unique equilibrium, and derives from this the conclusion that only relative product prices and productivities matter for relative wages. Only to the extent that trade changes these can it have any impact on inequality. So he instructs us to *ignore* any empirical evidence that contradicts this! (Since the relationships in the data aren't in the model, they must be spurious.) Moreover, this idiocy is not simply presented as his own opinion, but as the "consensus" of all economists who are competent to discuss this issue. What a pathetic profession is economics. Peter Dorman
