While barriers to trade in most goods and some services including capital flows have been reduced considerably over the past two decades, many remain. Such policies harm most the economies imposing them, but the worst of the merchandise barriers (in agriculture and textiles) are particularly...

America is in decline, and the rise of the East suggests a bleak future for the world's only superpower: so goes the conventional wisdom. But what if the traditional measures of national status are no longer as important as they once were? What if America's well-being was assessed according to...