Current Issue
On July 4, 2026, the United States marked 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, a milestone celebrated with fireworks in Washington, illuminated landmarks from the Eiffel Tower to Tokyo's Rainbow Bridge, and messages from world leaders spanning the political spectrum. This issue of the Global Association of Economics Education (GAEE) journal steps back from the ceremony to ask a quieter question: what does America's economic story at 250 look like from outside its borders?
America 250 gathers reflections from GAEE members across the organization's global chapters, examining the United States not as a fixed idea but as an economic force that has been continuously shaped by, and continuously reshaping, the rest of the world, through trade, technology, capital markets, and the institutions built in the postwar era. Contributions consider America's economic influence through the lens of countries that have alternately partnered with, depended on, competed against, and diverged from the American model over the past two and a half centuries.
Rather than offering a single verdict on American exceptionalism or decline, this issue treats the anniversary as an occasion for plural, sometimes conflicting perspectives -- written by the next generation of economists who did not live through most of that history, but who inherit its consequences. It asks what "250 years of ideas, values, and freedom", as one head of state put it this year, means concretely in balance sheets, labor markets, and everyday economic life far from Washington.
Forthcoming in August 2026