Article Launched: 5/28/2006 01:00 AM

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Interview: Robert McNown

A conversation with University of Colorado at Boulder economics professor Robert McNown, who plans to go to Vietnam this fall to train economists, under a Fulbright fellowship

DenverPost.com

Q: How is Vietnam different today from the past perceptions of the country?

A: As a result of economic liberalization in place since the mid-1980s, there is a thriving, small-scale entrepreneurial economy. A lot of foreign investment is moving into Vietnam. They have been growing the economy at 8 percent per year, which puts them at almost the same rate as China.

Q: Do you have any personal connections to Vietnam?

A: Ironically, I spent a part of my lifetime trying to avoid going to Vietnam when I was in college and graduate school. Now I am going under different circumstances. I have made short visits to Vietnam with CU's Semester at Sea program in 1995 and 1998.

Q: Back in 1989, you witnessed the student protests in Tiananmen Square in China as a visiting professor. What was that like?

A: It was an exciting time. My students had gone out on strike. It was fascinating to talk to people who were struggling with the concepts of democracy and political and economic liberalization. Some of the ideas we accept as second nature here, they were really trying to understand how they would work in practice in China.

Q: What happened when the protests were broken up by the government?

A: It was devastating to anyone who was involved or witnessed it. My immediate concern was for the safety of my wife and two young children. We were in a large hotel complex by the university. We felt safe, but then we heard on the shortwave radio that a couple of army units were about to square off against each other. We decided we didn't want to be around in a civil war. My family and two others made a convoy to the airport, and we did manage to get out in 15 hours.

Q: Do you worry that countries like China and Vietnam are offering their people a trade-off - economic prosperity but limited political freedoms?

A: It is something that I have thought about a lot - the whole question about the interaction of political and economic freedom. In the '50s and '60s, some of the Asian countries that achieved the greatest economic progress had some of the most authoritarian regimes - countries like Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. As they achieved economic prosperity, it translated into a demand for political freedom as well. Even though the communist regime in China is reluctant to give up any real power, it is possible there will be a natural transition from economic freedom to political freedom. My read is quite optimistic. The economic reforms in China have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of really bad poverty.

Q: Your research uses economic and demographic data to predict the outcome of presidential elections. Do people overestimate the importance of a candidate's charisma or stance on social issues?

A: In the Gore-Bush election, most of the other models said that Gore should have won by a comfortable margin because the economy was rolling along nicely. But he didn't. They also failed in the Bush-Kerry election. My model takes into account demographic factors that come much closer to predicting the elections. There is an interest in how much of the overall vote can be explained by these simple economic models. Incumbency is a very important factor, but the macroeconomic variables are important as well. Not much is left over for issues like immigration, abortion, gay rights. I can't say those things are unimportant. But in the economic models, they are known as extra unexplained variation, which is a pretty small part of the overall results.

Q: So Clinton's team had it right when they said, "It is the economy, stupid"?

A: That's true.

Q: Any predictions for the next presidential race?

A: In 2008, if the economy experiences a downturn, then the Republicans could be quite vulnerable.

Edited for space and clarity from an interview by staff writer Aldo Svaldi.