Economic Interdependence and International Cooperation: The Seminal Contribution of Richard N. Cooper

The aim of this article is to provide an initial historical reconstruction of the contribution made by Richard N. Cooper (1934–2020) to the understanding and management of the globalized economy that has emerged since the sixties. Cooper was fully involved in the age of decoupling between the economic space, increasingly globalized, and the political space, still fragmented into distinct nation-states. He was, among other things, the author of The economics of interdependence (1968) influencing the birth of the International Political Economy, senior staff economist for the Council of Economic Advisers in the Kennedy administration (1961–63) and Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs in the Carter administration (1977–81).