Soundtrack to a Financial Advisor's Life – Joseph Joyce Discusses the Positives and Negatives of 40 years of Globalization
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A Conversation with Joseph Joyce Discussing the Positives and Negatives of 40 years of Globalization.
Professor Joseph Joyce Interview Highlights:
The State of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). China leads FDI for the first time over the U.S. – why, what caused it and what are the implications?
Is the talk of both U.S.-based companies and Internationally-based companies reassessing their supply chains emanating out of China real or just talk?
Positives and Negatives of 40 years of globalization
State of Populism today and is Populism a reaction to globalization?
State of the International Monetary Fund and what role do it and Fed play in suppressing Market volatility and is that suppression a good thing in the long run?
The Dollar’s future as the World’s reserve currency and is being the reserve currency a good thing for the U.S.?
The importance of collaboration in the educational process
Trevor Chambers:
Hey everybody. This is Trevor Chambers from Olde Raleigh Financial. It’s January 2021 and we are starting back up our blog series. It’s called Meet the Masters. Very excited today. I have sir Joseph Joyce. How are you, professor?
JOSEPH JOYCE: I’m very well. Thank you, Trevor.
CHAMBERS: Thank you for joining us. I’m really excited about this post. Let me get – let me introduce and set the table a little bit here. Professor Joseph Joyce is the M. Margaret Ball professor of International Relations in the department of Economics at Wellesley College up in – how cold is it today in Massachusetts?
JOYCE: When I got out of the house this morning, it was eight degrees.
CHAMBERS: That sounds very painful. I’m an upstate New York kid and I understand that. That’s like knives going through you there. That’s not great. Professor Joyce is an expert, and this is why I have him, on financial globalization. And he’s actually published, I’m sure, several books but I’m not sure if books but certainly papers, but. He has a book called the IMF and Global Financial Crises: Phoenix Rising. It was published in Cambridge – at Cambridge University Press. So, welcome. I appreciate your time.
JOYCE: I’m happy to join you.
CHAMBERS: Thank you. So, the reason why, I found you online – sorry about that – that’s the library for you, here. I found you online. You recorded an article; China Overtakes US as World Leading Destination for Foreign Direct Investment. And I want to digest that a little bit. You know, we’ve talked – I’ve talked to several guests about China. And China really kind of put it, blame China. Obviously, China’s a lot in the news. Obviously, this past year with COVID, its economy is soon going to overtake, in terms of size of the US. So obviously it’s going to play a huge role in the world, so. I just like to start off and kind of break this down. Can you talk about what’s going on in China in terms of foreign director investment relative to us? Let’s start there. What – what’s going on with that?
JOYCE: So clearly, we can distinguish between the things that are going on in China that effect FDI there and the things that obviously are taking place in the US. So, let’s start with the US. And we’ll start off by pointing out that the slowdown in Foreign Direct Investment into the United States and out of the United States. It’s interesting because this has been going on starting two years ago. And so, US firms are doing less investing overseas because of changes in corporate taxes here in the US. Because of changes in how foreign profits will be done. So, there’s some things going on even before the pandemic. But then the pandemic, of course, comes a year ago and starts off in China and then spreads to Europe and the US and the rest of the world. And now looking back we can see that there were very different responses overtime to it. So, China, we might have been a little slow at the beginning but then caught up and enacted a lot of measures to contain the pandemic and their economy began to recover. Partly because of really excessive government intervention. So, the government really increased its own amount to spending, it deregulated, it lowered interest rates. They did all those things and the Chinese economy began coming back. It still has a way to go. I notice that consumption in spending in China is not up. Where it’s other parts the economy is. But you can see the economy roaring back as opposed, of course, what happened in the US and the Europe, for that matter, where the response was a bit slower, was more politicized over whether or not we should be shutting down. And we know in the US that we had a big contraction in the first quarter. Began to grow in the rest of the year but the response just in the most recent quarter was slow, about four percent on an annual basis. So, you can see really dramatic changes between the two countries in terms of how they responded to the pandemic and how it’s effecting their economic recovery. But again, I would say, that’s not the only thing. It’s obviously important but there is some structural things going on in terms of the US economy and what’s going on, and in fact, the willingness of the US government to accept foreign investment. So that also became politicized. So, the Trump administration was scrutinizing very carefully the amount of money coming in from overseas. Particularly when it was Chinese money. So that was another factor going on.
CHAMBERS: Okay. Excellent. So, let me ask something about supply chains. Obviously, with COVID we couldn’t get, you know the protective — just as an example, you know, protection gear against COVID, masks and things like that. I know, I know computer chips is a big deal. A lot of companies, car companies in particular complain they can’t get chips. Can you talk about reassessing supply chains? There’s a lot of talk of it but, you know, is that waning or – now it’s something that actually I think that you spoke to in the Wall Street Journal article. Can you give me kind of a status on that, from your point of view?
JOYCE: So, it’s so early to really know what multinationals are going to be doing in response to the pandemic. So, we’re going to have to really wait a while to really see it. But even though there was a lot of talk here in the US about reassessing back in the first quarter last year, there’s really no evidence that firms are really going to be doing that. The basic conditions that drive decisions about global supply chains are going to be more things related to cost of production, the ability to use technology to hook together different parts of the supply chain, et cetera. And so that’s going to be the sort of things that will affect whether or not a company wants to be overseas or not. On the other hand, you certainly can’t ignore the fact that the pandemic was a shock to global supply chains in general. And so, I would expect that firms would be in a sense reassessing how their resupply chains are spread out, where they’re spread out, whether or not there should be reconfiguration, whether or not there should be some redundancy. So that if one particular part of the world was shut down because of future pandemic that they continue to draw upon other parts of the world. But that’s going to take time. And firms are not going to rush out to do that.
CHAMBERS: Yeah, I wouldn’t think so. I mean, to your point, I mean, price plays a huge role in this thing and maybe political sense to say these things that we’re going to reassure some of this stuff but I don’t know the practicality of it. So that will – so basically to be determined on that, for sure.
JOYCE: Yeah.
CHAMBERS: That kind of leads me to this. I know that you – that you studied globalization through your lens. Can you break down globalization for us? What do you think are the two or three, you know, positives and then particularly from the US point of view, what are the negatives? Particularly the consumer? And then I have a follow-on question to that. So, what do you think – let’s start with the positives? What do you think are the most beneficial things you’ve got going on with globalization?
JOYCE: So, I think economists in general would say that if globalization were done properly allows access of people in one country to foreign (inaudible) of production. That would allow them to have goods and services that might not be available domestically or would be much more expensive. So, to choose one, you may find silly but I think is a perfectly fine example. Think about coffee. It turns out that coffee is grown in the United States in the State of Hawaii. But would we really want the US dependent upon coffee grown in Hawaii which probably would be really expensive if it tried to be national. And of course, the answers going to be no. So, that’s just one example of the sort of things that we take for granted. That we like, there would be in a world market place when we can access things. That’s one thing I would say worth thinking about. The second of all, globalization allows other countries to do well and in a sense that’s in our interest. It’s not really good for the US to have been in the predominate country that it was say in 1945, at the end of WWII. That simply is too much of an equal balance. So, the extent that other countries are able to grow and their economies grow and then trade with the United States. That certainly would be a positive thing as well. The third one I would say is that in general I think immigration is good for the US in the sense that it draws foreigners who come and work and work hard and contribute to the US economy. I’m the grandson of four Irish immigrants who came here around the year 1900. They came because at that time Ireland was a very, very poor country. The US represented a place to do better and that dynamic, I think, is still going on in the world. I think we continue to see, seeing as a place where when immigrants can get in, that they can do well and flourish and that’s good for them obviously but I think it’s good for the economy as well. And then going back to the notion about international side, I said that other economies are growing and that’s good and as a result what we’ve seen is a shrinkage of income differentials across countries. So, if you look at advanced economies like the US, Germany, France, Japan, at one time the average income would have been much higher than that in, let’s say, China or India. And that difference has fallen over time. And again, I think for us that’s good. I don’t think it’s good to have huge differentials between living standards in one country and those in another. So those are just some of the things that come to mind when you ask me about the positives.
CHAMBERS: All right. So, let’s take the other side of it. What’s – what are some of the negatives?
JOYCE: So, while the US economy may have benefited by having access to these foreign goods and services. Doesn’t mean that everybody in the United States benefited. And so, yes, it’s convenient for us if we go to Starbucks and buy our coffee there. But other companies that produce things which can be made in the US may find that foreign competition is simply more than they can handle given the cost structure of the United States. So, we know that the manufacturing sector of the United States was affected. Now let’s be careful. Technology is also a major factor. So even without globalization, we know that the factories of today are very different from the factories that I would’ve thought a lot about, you know, back when I was younger. So those factories are very different, just because of technology. And they will have, obviously fewer workers if they have a lot of automation. But we know that imports also played a role. And so, economists have studied this very carefully to try to get a sense of the relative size of it and there is certainly evidence that parts of the manufacturing sector of the United States were simply pushed aside by the surge of imports that came into the US, particularly from China. And those people, where are they going to go? It’s one thing to say, well they can retrain and go elsewhere. But in the case of people who may have had high school education and maybe they’re in their forties and fifties and they lose their jobs. Do you really think they’re going to become programmers for Google? That’s not going to happen. And so that part of it was kind of ignored. It was just a sense that yeah, they’ll be a reorganization of the economy and everybody will have a nice new job but it doesn’t happen quite that easily. So that’s one major thing that in sense we missed and which is affecting I think the US political discourse today. The other thing on immigration, I said, I think, and economists agreed that immigration is positive but it does put an impact upon local resources. So, if you live in a water area in Texas. You’re well aware of the fact that having migrants come, it’s going to affect basic things as schooling, hospitalization, et cetera, et cetera. And if you don’t have the tax base to support it, clearly immigrations going to look not quite as well as it does to me on a national basis. So those are just two of the things that mean that yes, globalization may have benefits overall but we could add individual people, individual areas. Those benefits are not always apparent.
CHAMBERS: So, we’ve had a rise in populism. Obviously, Trump is — one of the things that had Trump rise was this populism and I – is it fair to say that globalization sort of fed populism and is eating populism, particularly in the US?
JOYCE: So, let’s talk about populism very briefly. I’ll refer to an article written by someone at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. A very good economist who I respect enormously called Danny Roger. And Professor Roger wrote a great article about populism pointing out the different kinds. Populism is basically what? A move that says there’s one group, our group, and we represent the people somehow. And then there are the others. And the others are doing something which hurts us in some way. I think it’d be different types of populism. There could be leftwing populism, where we draw the line between the people being the workers and the other is being the capitalists. And so, then the lines are very clear what we are talking about. But they can be other types of populism. It could be nationalism. There we draw the line perhaps at us being the domestic people and the others being the foreigners. And so, I think Mr. Trump very much exploited that type of feeling. That there was a sense that Americans are one group of people. Obviously, we care about the domestic welfare and it’s being injured by the foreigners. Where the foreigners are in this case, individuals or migrants who come across the border. Steal our jobs. Lower our wages, et cetera, et cetera. So, he did a pretty good job of in a sense painting the foreigners as a threat and an unfair depiction in my words, my eyes. But that’s kind of what he did.
CHAMBERS: Yeah. The – it seems to me when I – as I move around and deal with investors, this is definitely challenging and kind of stirring up the markets overall at times. And kind of setting people at ease – in an uneased. It’s adding to it, I think to a large degree. And I think it, you know, there’s so much cash on the sidelines, so much cash on the sidelines. And maybe it’s just over hanged from the great recession of ’08. I don’t know. People are, you know, — and now there are factors, you know, obviously, baby boomers are retiring and they’re just shifting from more conservative things but, you know, I just wonder if this background search is costing people to not be so enthusiastic about, as investments as they normally would be. So, IMF, I just want to – this wasn’t on our list to talk about but I know – how’s the IMF doing? What’s – what’s the – what’s the status? I know that you – you shared with me a really interesting interview that you did with a figure inside the IMF. And I know it’s something that you watch. So, can you give me sort of a state of the state of the IMF?
JOYCE: So, I think the IMF has really evolved a lot over time. If you go back starting in 1997, ’98, you may remember that was the East Asian crisis. And the IMF came in to help countries like Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, and was criticized for in a sense misunderstanding the crisis. And blaming it on different types of government spending when in fact it was really a capital flight. It was foreign money which had come in all of a sudden exiting. And we call that a sudden stop. The IMF basically missed that and so they’re policy prescriptions weren’t appropriate. They got criticized. Really heavily. And so, you could say they didn’t do a particularly (sic) job at least at the beginning of that crisis. Jump up to 2008, ’09 and I think most people agree that the fund did a much better job. They realized this really was a global financial crisis emanated in the financial markets of the US. But then spread throughout the world. And the IMF was very good at mobilizing resources for particularly the middle income, the lower income countries and helping them out without adding on policy prescriptions that would only make things worse. So, when I wrote the book, I was really trying to point out that I think the IMF learned a lesson from what it had done in ’97 and ’98. And so, let’s now press forward to today. And so, we have a new managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, who I had a chance to meet. Very impressive woman, by the way. And my sense looking at what she’s doing with the IMF now is that they realize what they did last time was good, and in a sense, they want to do even more. And so, they’ve really been mobilizing resources to try to help developing economies, which are obviously hurt by the pandemic, by the economic slowdown and they’re being really active. And the other thing that came up in the interview is that they would be more attentive to issues that historically the IMF would not have dealt with. Things like income and equality. Gender and equality. Climate change. You know, at one time the IMF would say that’s not our stuff. We only deal with macroeconomics. But it’s clear that now they are paying attention to those things and looking at the economic consequences. So, I think at least to date, my sense is that they’ve been really good at putting together resources and reaching out to countries. Encouraging countries to come to them and clearly, it’ll be a while before we can assess whether or not that worked out well or not. But at least they’re saying the sort of things you would hope they would say at the beginning of a global financial crisis.
CHAMBERS: Yeah. I would think overall it’s straight that — that with this crisis they seem to be in a better positioning to help, for sure. I saw you wrote something about volatility and the suppression of it. Can you talk a little bit about what the implications of that are?
JOYCE: So, there’s a lot to say about volatility. For one thing we can start by saying well, what type of volatility?
CHAMBERS: Right. Yeah.
JOYCE: It could be volatility in terms of GDP and consumption. But think of the volatility in terms of the financial markets.
CHAMBERS: Yeah.
JOYCE: And clearly the financial markets are showing a lot more volatility than the actual economies themselves. So that’s one thing to start off with. And then the question is what can be done about it? And that’s a really, really complicated issue and I don’t have any easy answer.
CHAMBERS: Right.
JOYCE: But it’s clear that the financial markets do respond to changes in sentiment about what’s going on in the real economy. And those changes can come out very rapidly, particularly in a world with internet access where people are constantly checking out other economies, checking out other stock markets, financial markets, et cetera. So, volatility is just part of all this. If you’re asking about what’s going on today, in terms of financial markets, I think it really is a result to some extent, to a large extent of federal reserve policy. The fed is doing what again what you would want them to do in terms of lowering interest rates. Trying to be supportive of the economy. It’s all to the good. But it does have unintended consequences. And expect part of the unintended consequences is that by making it easy to borrow, that you will fuel speculation. And that speculation will wind up showing itself in terms of asset pricing. And there’s no easy answer to that. I don’t expect the Fed and the Fed has made it very clear they don’t want the job of worrying about the stock market. They don’t see that as their primary problem. But they can’t ignore the fact that yes, there are going to be impacts of really low interest rates upon financial assets and therefore financial volatility over time. So, it’s kind of a balancing act. They can’t ignore it but again they make it plain, they don’t want that to be what’s driving the response to the economy.
CHAMBERS: Yeah. The – the – the fed telegraphed and they’re going to stay low for a while. I mean, it’s interesting, you know, and then to be in times like this because we have people say, “I don’t understand.” What’s the disconnect here? You got the markets raging but so many people are unemployed. And – so what – you know, we get that all the time. You know, I don’t understand. What is going on? And then of course you get stuff like this game — I don’t even — I don’t really want to mention it but I think again, this whole GameStop thing is sort of a byproduct if you will of this (inaudible) monetary policy to some degree, because to your point of people are pushing risk a little bit because of the lower rates. And – also dovetailing on that, and I meant to say this, ask this question when we were talking about globalism. Do you think that us, the dollar, the US dollar being the reserve currency, is – is that, what – obviously there’s populous but overall, what do you think? I mean, do you think – do you have any sense of what maybe the next ten, twenty years are going to look like for that? Do you think the reserve currency will shift to others and is being a reserve currency all roses?
JOYCE: It’s probably good to for US, whether that’s good for the rest of the world, isn’t quite clear. I suspect, this is something that, you know, people might be able to talk about a lot. What we’re moving towards is a world in which clearly the US was the one super reserve currency. And then there are others like the Euro which are more regional. That may continue. And that the Chinese currency may become more and more used but it’s not going to displace the US. The reason for that, in part, is because for that to happen, the Chinese financial markets would have to become completely open to capital flows. So that (inaudible) confidence about their ability to go in and out of the Chinese currency and the Chinese markets. And at least on the current Chinese political administration, that’s not going to happen. So, I think we may be moving from a world in which there was one super reserve currency, the dollar, into a world in which there may be a series of regional currencies. Obviously, the dollar being one of them. They continue to be an important. But we may see a rise in the use of the Chinese currency over time. And again, we may be even more splitting into blocks. So, the Euro block would obviously be one block of countries. Asia might be another block with the Chinese currency being the chief reserve currency for many of those countries. Clearly the dollar will be important for Europe as well as South America. And that type of regionalization is what we might slowly be moving towards.
CHAMBERS: Yeah. I know, the things that we read, I – that’s sort of the general gist of it as well. It’s such an interesting time. This must be such an interesting time for you to be in your field. I mean, it’s just got to be incredible. Is there anything else that you’d like to share that you’re finding that you have any special interest in as you travel around and listen to people talk?
JOYCE: Well, something else that people may not be aware of. It kind of goes back to your question about globalization and the benefits and everything.
CHAMBERS: Uh- huh.
JOYCE: The fact, and as well as your question about the US as a reserve currency, is that you might have thought back say in 2008, ’09. You know we all remember that. Most people listening will remember that. There’s a real lack of confidence in financial markets et cetera, et cetera. And certainly, a sense that, you know, the US may no longer be the chief financial (inaudible). Well guess what, if we continue to be if anything even more important. And there’s a lot of that were done by economists showing how changes in US policy, particularly Federal Reserve policy, are transmitted around the world. So, if anything the US will become systematically even more important. So that obviously when we talk about the federal reserve, we concentrate on how it effects, say US financial markets. But we have to realize that it effects world financial markets as well. So, it isn’t just that people in the US are fed watchers. Foreigners are as well. And they’re very, very careful to look at the Fed and try to understand where the Fed is going with their policies and how it might affect them. So, we really have an impact on the world economy which might be bigger than most people even realize.
CHAMBERS: Yeah. And, you know when I hear you talking like that, what I hear is stay invested. You know, so many people panicked out last March and, because they just didn’t believe. And the sun will rise again, you know what I mean? And you and I before we got started, were like how do we tie this back to the average person. You know, the average investor.
JOYCE: Yeah.
CHAMBERS: And, so that’s, yes. The US is not going anywhere. If anything, you know, the momentum continues to increase and I think our world is even more important. And so, anyways, that’s – that’s the lesson, you know that you have to believe. Human beings always want to do better. They – and companies always want to be more efficient and, you know the S&P 500 companies, they get up every day that people are running those companies and figure out how am I going to do this better? How do I increase – how do I make this business model better? And we can’t lose sight of that, so. Is there anything else that you would like to share or are we moving on to the final two exciting questions?
JOYCE: Yeah, I think you’ve covered a lot of interesting topics. I’ve only given you kind of short answers because of time, obviously.
CHAMBERS: Yeah.
JOYCE: But I’ll just say, you know, I got into my field of International Economics because when I was an undergraduate at Georgetown University, I took a course in international economics. Second semester of senior year. And Trevor, I absolutely loved it. It was by the far the hardest thing I had done as an undergraduate. Just a lot of material conceptually. But it explained so much and I finally understood why countries would fight so bitterly over exchange rates and things like that. So, you know, there’s always something going on in the world economy and it’s clearly always possible to be worried about what’s going on and there are worrying things. Very serious things. But, as you said, I mean, things will continue differently than maybe we think they would be but it’s just great to study this stuff because it gives you more insights than what’s happening. It gives you a little more confidence that there is a certain logic. The kind of headlines we read.
CHAMBERS: Yeah, and the other thing is there’s always going to be crisis’s. You know, we like to tell our people in every – you gotta (sic) just expect that every five, six years, there’s going to be some nutty thing that’s going to happen. And you gotta (sic) build that into your plan. I’m sure that you – being the – you were probably a better investor now that you were before because this is the stuff you study and you just put it into – everything has relative time, you know. And, but you have to expect that there’s going to be volatility. There just is. And in fact, to tell you the truth, you can use volatility to your advantage. You know, if you play your cards right, so. All right. I want to ask you a couple more personal questions.
JOYCE: Okay.
CHAMBERS: Local restaurants. I have a past in the restaurant industry. My family, my brother-in-law and my sister-in-law own a wonderful restaurant her in Raleigh. And so, I’m sort of skewed with that, so. Tell me. One or two – one, two restaurants that you’d like to give a shout out to locally that you’ve either dined in, in the past year during COVID or maybe regularly get some to go from.
JOYCE: Very good question. And I certainly –
CHAMBERS: Might be the most exciting question. I don’t know.
JOYCE: Let me – give me one second while I just try to think out loud about it. Because there are a couple here in Wellesley that we go to. Okay, certainly there’s a Turkish restaurant here in Wellesley.
CHAMBERS: Nice.
JOYCE: Café Mangal. M-A-N, I might have the spelling wrong. M-A-N-G-H-A-L. Something like that.
CHAMBERS: Okay.
JOYCE: And they’re fabulous and just foods from that part of the world which you may not be used to. So, we think very highly of that.
CHAMBERS: Yeah.
JOYCE: There is a Indian restaurant here in Wellesley Hills called Singh’s Café S-I-N-G-H-‘-S Café. And they have the Indian food which my family loves. And so, a treat (inaudible) when my daughters come to visit is to get takeout from Singh’s Café. So, I would certainly want to bring that to your attention.
CHAMBERS: Excellent. All right. Well, if I’m ever in that part of the world, I’ll know, I’m going to tap you for those. That’s great. All right. Perfect. Next thing is what are you reading, podcasting or streamed lately that you might want to share.
JOYCE: So, I do listen to podcasts. There’s so many of them which are just so much fun to listen to. And yes, there are some which are economics but there are some which deal with other things. So, if you listen to history podcast a name, you’ll know is Michael Duncan. And Mike Duncan became famous for his podcast on the history of Rome. Which really drew a lot of people to podcasts in general and since that one, he’s done a new one called Revolutions. And they’re just fascinating stories. He goes all the way back to the English Civil War, I believe and the American Revolution and the most current one that he’s doing, of course is the Russian Revolution. And on each of these, he tells us stories of the people, philosophies, what was the cause of the Revolution, how did it come about and it’s just such an interesting historical experience to listen to these stories of other times when clearly things seemed pretty bad then as well.
CHAMBERS: Thank you for this. I personally love that stuff. I’m going to give you one and our listeners. Business Wars.
JOYCE: Business Wars, yeah?
CHAMBERS: Business Wars is cool. I just – it’s on the Wondery platform and I think Amazon just bought Wondery. But what they do is they do a dramatization of – of – of companies and industries as they grew. So, for example, they broke down Levi’s versus Lee jeans. Or they did pizza wars. Pizza Hut and one of the other big chains, I can’t remember. Or actually the latest one they did or one of the latest ones they did was Instagram versus Tik Tok. And they just break down the whole history. It’s really, really pretty cool. I just discovered it a couple months ago so I’ll give you back that one.
JOYCE: Sounds good.
CHAMBERS: Hey, I know – now that I have you – as I said to you before we started, I’ve interviewed several professors during the life of this podcast. While I have you and I don’t mean to stick you with a question off the path here a little bit but, education. You’re obviously an educator. You’ve told me you’ve been doing it for forty years. COVID has definitely turned – it’s definitely has us look at education, particularly higher education a little bit different. Do you have any thoughts on that? I mean, obviously you guys are going to get back in class eventually. But do you have any sense of like, from your point of view as a professor, what are you doing now? I assume you’re doing everything virtual and do you think that’s going to continue to be part of the game? I’m sure it will but do you have any thoughts on that?
JOYCE: Well, I tell you what we’re doing, first. In the first semester we had our first- and second-year students were allowed to come to campus. And because it was just them, and not the upper-class women, they could have individual rooms. And now in the Spring, we’re doing the opposite. So, the Juniors and Seniors are allowed to come here and the first and second years presumably will be at home. And so, each semester we’ve had a mix. We have had obviously classes online. And I’ve done that. But we’ve also had classes here on campus, in person, I’ve done that. But as you can imagine when we do it in person, it’s very different because what we’ve done – I taught in an auditorium that usually has several hundred people and there were 24 women I was teaching. I was on the stage with a mask. They were wearing masks. And I was showing them things on a slide as opposed to a black board. For the first time in my years at Wellesley, I had to get a seating chart, because they want masks on it was hard for me understand who I was looking at. So, we did it and I tried really hard to make it a good experience and the students were wonderful in terms of being, you know, resilient at going along with it. But going back to your general question. After being here at Wellesley for as long as I have been, I really believe there’s something special about there being a classroom discussion that has a faculty member up as well as it’s relatively small number of students, perhaps 15, 20, 30. That’s simply a type of education which you can’t do online. And I’m not a technology – I’m not saying there may not be times when classes online might be very useful particularly for types of graduate education, business education. Absolutely it’s appropriate then. I’m simply saying that for what I do as an undergraduate teacher, that having those people in a classroom physically seeing each other as well as me. There’s something special about that and they simply learn to relate to each other, to learn from each other in ways that I don’t think you can do online.
CHAMBERS: Yeah, I think that collaboration issue is — you know I have two – I’ve got a middle schooler, an 8th grader, and a Junior in high school and I think that collaboration piece just cannot be replicated. And that’s just (inaudible) evidence that I’m getting from my kids and so I would agree with you on that. Completely. But certainly, the educational model is definitely – definitely interesting right now. Let’s put it that way and it’s going to be interesting to see how it comes out the other side so. Well, Professor Joyce, I really – first of all I want to say that I was also too a product of Irish immigrants. Mine came over a little earlier in the 1840’s, 1850’s. But potato family guys. But I do love my fellow Irish blood people so that’s good. And it’s been such a pleasure. I really appreciate the time and your insights. If you’re into it, we may do this again down the road review the tape, and review some of these topics, so. Anyway, I thank you so much. Be safe. Be warm and hopefully tomorrow will be a warmer day. I’m hoping.
JOYCE: We will take anything at this stage up in New England.
CHAMBERS: Absolutely. And thanks for the recommendations on the podcast and the food. I do appreciate that so much. So, thank you very much and we’ll certainly be talking to you again.
JOYCE: Thank you, Trevor. It was a pleasure talking to you.
CHAMBERS: All right. Thank you.
Background Information:
Joseph Joyce – Full Bio
Joseph Joyce is a Professor of Economics at Wellesley College, and holds the M. Margaret Ball Chair in International Relations. He served as the first Faculty Director of the Madeleine Korbel Institute for Global Affairs from 2009 through 2016. In 2014, he was awarded the Pinanski Teaching Prize, awarded to honor fine teaching. Professor Joyce received a B.S.F.S. degree in international affairs from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Boston University. Professor Joyce’s research deals with issues in financial globalization. His book, The IMF and Global Financial Crises: Phoenix Rising? was published in 2012 by Cambridge University Press. His articles have appeared in many professional journals.
Trevor Chambers – Full Bio
Trevor joined Olde Raleigh Financial Services in January of 2015 and his primary role is new business development and marketing. Prior to joining the firm, Trevor spent 12 years working at his family’s restaurant, Raleigh’s Bella Monica Cucina & Vino. “Exceptional service, no matter the industry, is paramount and we attract clients who value and take comfort in being taken care of.”