Disciplining China’s Trade Practices at the WTO: How WTO Complaints Can Help Make China More Market-Oriented

There is a growing bipartisan sentiment in Washington that Chinese trade practices are a problem, since these practices are unfair to American companies in a number of ways. But there is disagreement about the appropriate response. Can multilateral institutions be of use here? Or is unilateralism the only way? In a new study, Cato scholars James Bacchus, Simon Lester, and Huan Zhu contend that WTO dispute settlement has more potential to address China’s practices than the administration believes.

The Ties That Blind: How the U.S.-Saudi Alliance Damages Liberty and Security

Washington’s solicitous, even enabling, posture toward Saudi Arabia cannot disguise the fact that the kingdom has never been a reliable U.S. ally. Unfortunately, U.S. leaders are far too willing to make moral compromises when security threats are modest. Abandoning essential moral standards and values for the defense of lesser interests is never justified. Yet that is precisely what the United States has done with Saudi Arabia for decades.

The Ties That Blind documents the many instances in which United States and Saudi interests have diverged and explains why the toxic U.S.–Saudi alliance indefensible on both strategic and moral grounds becomes clearer and more urgent than ever before.

Should Governments Restrict Cash?

Central bankers and mainstream monetary economists have become intrigued with the idea of reducing, or even entirely eliminating, hand-to-hand currency. Yet the arguments for phasing out cash or confining it to small denomination bills are, when not entirely mistaken, extremely weak. In a new paper, Cato scholar Jeffrey Rogers Hummel argues that proponents of restricting cash appreciably oversell any advantages and ignore or understate the severe disadvantages.

Fixing the Bias in Current State K–12 Education Rankings

State education rankings published by U.S. News & World Report, Education Week, and others play a prominent role in legislative debate and public discourse concerning education. However, according to a new paper by Stan Liebowitz and Matthew L. Kelly, when achievement tests are used as measures of learning in these conventional rankings, they are aggregated in a way that provides misleading results. To overcome these deficiencies, Liebowitz and Kelly create a new ranking of state education systems using demographically disaggregated achievement data and excluding less informative factors that are not directly related to learning.

Recent Commentary

Events

November 30

Cato Institute Policy Perspectives 2018

Featuring Jonah Goldberg, Fellow and Asness Chair in Applied Liberty, American Enterprise Institute, Author, Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy; Peter Goettler, President and CEO, Cato Institute; Mustafa Akyol, Senior Fellow, Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, Cato Institute; Ryan Bourne, R. Evan Scharf Chair for the Public Understanding of Economics, Cato Institute; and Caleb O. Brown Director of Multimedia and host of Cato Daily Podcast, Cato Institute.

10:30AM to 2:00PM CST
The Drake Hotel, 140 East Walton Place, Chicago

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Of Special Note

Freedom: Art as the Messenger

Freedom: Art as the Messenger

The Cato Institute welcomes artists working in any medium to address the concept of Freedom: Art as the Messenger. We are living in an era where people are finding their combative voice but having little conversation or dialogue. The goal of this inaugural exhibition is to provide a medium for that conversation.

This exhibition invites all investigative points of view in all media; 2-D, 3-D, audio, and video. A full spectrum of interpretation is invited — whether personal, emotional, general, realistic or imagined, communal, or individual — addressing Freedom in all its manifestations through art.

Special! 10 Copies for $10

Cato Pocket Constitution

To encourage people everywhere to better understand and appreciate the principles of government that are set forth in America’s founding documents, the Cato Institute published this pocket-size edition.

Now Available

Home Study Resources

The Cato Institute offers a wealth of online educational audio and video resources, from self-paced guides on the ideas of liberty and the principles of economics, to exclusive, archived lectures by thinkers such as Milton Friedman and F. A. Hayek. Browse through some highlights of our collections, for personal study or for use in the classroom.

The Jones Act: Charting a New Course after a Century of Failure

For nearly 100 years the Jones Act has restricted the transportation of cargo between two points in the U.S. to ships that are U.S.-built, crewed, owned, and flagged. Meant to bolster the U.S. maritime industry, the Act has instead led to a steady deterioration in the number of ships, sailors, shipyards, and has imposed large economic burdens. This full-day conference examines the Act in greater detail and evaluates options for reform.