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Professor L. Alan Winters has been presented with a special double issue of the journal World Trade Review, for which he has served as Managing Editor for twelve years, from December 2008 to mid-2020.

Launched in 2002 as a joint initiative of the World Trade Organization Secretariat and Cambridge University Press, the World Trade Review has become the leading multidisciplinary journal in the field of international trade broadly defined.

Opening the event, held on 5th October and attended by close colleagues, Dr Ingo Borchert (co-guest editor of the issue alongside Bernard Hoekman) explained that the purpose of a Festschrift is to honour an eminent scholar’s achievements and impact with special articles written by (former) students, co-authors and colleagues.

Steve McGuire, Dean of the Business School, commented that the UK Trade Policy Observatory, which was founded by Alan in 2016, has been one of the significant achievements of the Business School in the past 8 years that he has been Dean of the Business School. He said: “Alan has always been a shining star for the Business School in terms of both publications and intellectual contribution. However, it is his citizenship - to make other people better at what they do and excel in their careers - that is outstanding.”

Sambit Bhattacharyya, Head of Department Economics, noted in his remarks that “Alan’s work has inspired a generation of scholars and policymakers for trade openness”.

The World Trade Review ‘Double Special Issue: Trade Policy, Openness, and Development in Honour of L. Alan Winters’ collates articles from four key areas: openness, development and growth; trade policy; preferential trade and regional integration; and non-economic objectives, trade and regulatory policies.

Cast through the lens of its 36 contributors with the latest research in areas that have characterised Alan’s lifetime of research, the special issue illustrates the fullness of the academic approach Alan has always taken.

Alan thanked the journal’s guest editors, contributors and the intellectual community around him – not just trade scholars and students but colleagues more in the department and more widely across the university. 

He said: “I’m an economist and I’m proud of that. I think economists have a lot to offer. I am proud of UKTPO and its successor, the CITP, the first ESRC-funded research centre on trade. I am proud of the team. As researchers, rather than policymakers, we bring rigour to the process. At the beginning of my career, I was advised that the real contribution of economists is ‘to get the argument right, not winning the argument. Over the 52 years of my career as a professional economist, this has been a guiding principle. I have spent my life ‘at the thinking end of policy or at the policy end of thinking’."

Reflecting on his editorship of the World Trade Review, Alan observed that nearly every academic article in this journal nowadays has policy relevance, even if not an immediate recommendation. 

Ingo remarked that Alan has always encouraged, led, and lived interdisciplinarity. It was therefore only natural for the event to culminate in a panel discussion on “How to make interdisciplinary research work” with panellists Professors Bernard Hoekman, Alasdair Smith and Emily Lydgate.

The speakers discussed the challenges imposed by interdisciplinary research, including the need for incentives to engage in such research and the willingness to invest in a deep mutual understanding of concepts and methods. Yet they also noted that collaboration across disciplines can produce much more compelling solutions to real-world policy problems. The need for strong leadership and mutual esteem was also seen as critical to making interdisciplinary collaboration successful. Alan has fostered and championed these conditions throughout his career as a researcher, policy adviser, and editor.

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