What about the no-global movement? Obviously, like the term, it's diffuse and hard to pin down, but does it worry you that there's misinformation, generalisations. etc?

Again, I find it hard to generalise about it. You have people involved who are basically just anti-capitalist, and were anti-capitalist well before they decided they were anti-globalisation. On the other hand there are people who are angry about the way World Trade rules are rigged against poor countries. One of the good things we've seen is that people like Oxfam have shown that there's no contradiction between being a well trained economist and caring about market efficiency and so on, and caring about the situation of people in the third world. They're making the case for liberalising trade to help developing countries in a way that is completely consistent with what mainstream economics would say. In some ways there's a convergence between mainstream economic thinking and the concerns of many development organisations.

You've written about the EU: what is the chief role or responsibility for the EU in relation to trade and globalisation, from your point of view?

Well, a lot of Europeans see themselves as a moral counterweight in relation to other countries, for example America. But it's very easy to be ethical where you have no interest at stake. If you want to be truly ethical you have to do it where you have interests at stake, and that means we have to give a lead on liberalising trade. If you think the biggest moral issue today is third world poverty, then we have to do everything that's possible to help developing countries escape from that poverty. That means doing things more or less such as abandoning the common agricultural policy, abolishing barriers to trade in textiles and so on. Unless Europeans, and the European Union are ethical in cases where it hurts them, I don't think anyone is going to take them seriously.

And now we have various bits of legislation against immigration throughout Europe…

There are a number of things that can be said on this. The first thing is, that everyone knows that Europe needs to import more people because Europeans are not having as many babies, so self interest is going to compel us to accept more people. The second point is that we have obligations under international law as regards refugees, and it looks a bit funny to lecture the Americans on international law on the one hand and then undermine the rights of asylum seekers on the other. Thirdly, there is going to be politically a limit on the amount of immigrants, and there's nothing in international law that says you have to have an open borders policy- there are always going to be restrictions. But if there are going to be restrictions then I think you have to do everything you can to help developing countries through trade, aid, subsidising research in areas like Malaria and so on.

In contrast with the 19th century, do we have more or less free trade now, in your opinion?

That's a tough one to answer. Thirty or fourty years ago you would have said for sure that we don't have as much free trade as in periods of the 19th century. Now world trade is pretty free, but it's not a quantum leap.

And what way is the trend going?

Well, the trend has been towards greater freedom, and has been for a long time. If it's going to be maintained depends upon things like the next world trade talks. We don't know yet how the Europeans or Americans are going to approach those. So it's hard to say.

Are we in a situation where there's more free trade, within trading blocks like NAFTA and the EU, but with restrictions for those outside? And where does that leave developing countries?

In principle they could certainly be hurt by these trading blocks. I suppose if NAFTA does become a Pan-American trading block, it will at least help Latin America, but there's the danger of Africa being left completely outside these arrangements. Though if you have fewer blocks negotiating with each other in trade talks it may be easier to reach agreement about trade liberalisation. There's a whole debate about this, but you get a sense that the whole idea of negotiating through blocks will make negotiators in the richer countries less anxious to strike deals with each other, with the Europeans thinking &ldquoWe can just liberalise amongst ourselves”, and the Americans, Latin Americans thinking roughly the same thing. So there are dangers there.