Revisiting the China Shock (with Joseph Francis)

Economic historian Joseph Francis joins Russ Roberts to argue that the "China shock" — the claim that a surge of Chinese imports destroyed American manufacturing jobs and the communities that depended on them — is far weaker than its reputation suggests. Francis walks through a 2022 correction to the paper's research design that cut its estimate of lost jobs in half and erased its findings on wages and living standards. From there the conversation widens into how economics as a field operates: what kinds of results get rewarded, and why peer review did not catch the problems earlier. The episode is less about trade than about how a contested finding becomes conventional wisdom in Washington.