Download or read book Unbound written by Heather Boushey and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Financial Times Book of the Year “The strongest documentation I have seen for the many ways in which inequality is harmful to economic growth.” —Jason Furman “A timely and very useful guide...Boushey assimilates a great deal of recent economic research and argues that it amounts to a paradigm shift.” —New Yorker Do we have to choose between equality and prosperity? Decisions made over the past fifty years have created underlying fragilities in our society that make our economy less effective in good times and less resilient to shocks, such as today’s coronavirus pandemic. Many think tackling inequality would require such heavy-handed interference that it would stifle economic growth. But a careful look at the data suggests nothing could be further from the truth—and that reducing inequality is in fact key to delivering future prosperity. Presenting cutting-edge economics with verve, Heather Boushey shows how rising inequality is a drain on talent, ideas, and innovation, leading to a concentration of capital and a damaging under-investment in schools, infrastructure, and other public goods. We know inequality is fueling social unrest. Boushey shows persuasively that it is also a serious drag on growth. “In this outstanding book, Heather Boushey...shows that, beyond a point, inequality damages the economy by limiting the quantity and quality of human capital and skills, blocking access to opportunity, underfunding public services, facilitating predatory rent-seeking, weakening aggregate demand, and increasing reliance on unsustainable credit.” —Martin Wolf, Financial Times “Think rising levels of inequality are just an inevitable outcome of our market-driven economy? Then you should read Boushey’s well-argued, well-documented explanation of why you’re wrong.” —David Rotman, MIT Technology Review

Download or read book Knowledge Inequality and Growth in the New Economy written by Richard Nahuis and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2003 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the past two centuries, major technological breakthroughs such as the steam engine and electricity have acted as the catalysts for growth and have resulted in a marked increase in material well-being. The dominant technology today - information and communication technology (ICT) - does not seem to drive growth as effectively and has coincided with an apparent increase in wage inequality. This book provides explanations of these two characteristics of modern economies and analyses them from both an individual and integrated perspective. Richard Nahuis explores and combines the seemingly separate phenomena of wage inequality between high-skilled and low-skilled workers, and the relatively low productivity growth experienced by most countries. The author provides a number of alternative theories for the increase in wage inequality as a result of new technologies, combined with an extensive review of the associated literature. He goes on to detail the technological revolution, describe why this does not necessarily result in high productivity growth and outline the best methods to measure productivity in the new economy. This exhaustive exploration of productivity growth and wage inequality between high-skilled and low-skilled workers in the knowledge economy will be welcomed by economists and policymakers interested in the complex relationships between labour markets, innovation and technical change.

Download or read book The Knowledge Capital of Nations written by Eric A. Hanushek and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-08-15 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rigorous, pathbreaking analysis demonstrating that a country's prosperity is directly related in the long run to the skills of its population. In this book Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann make a simple, central claim, developed with rigorous theoretical and empirical support: knowledge is the key to a country's development. Of course, every country acknowledges the importance of developing human capital, but Hanushek and Woessmann argue that message has become distorted, with politicians and researchers concentrating not on valued skills but on proxies for them. The common focus is on school attainment, although time in school provides a very misleading picture of how skills enter into development. Hanushek and Woessmann contend that the cognitive skills of the population—which they term the “knowledge capital” of a nation—are essential to long-run prosperity. Hanushek and Woessmann subject their hypotheses about the relationship between cognitive skills (as consistently measured by international student assessments) and economic growth to a series of tests, including alternate specifications, different subsets of countries, and econometric analysis of causal interpretations. They find that their main results are remarkably robust, and equally applicable to developing and developed countries. They demonstrate, for example, that the “Latin American growth puzzle” and the “East Asian miracle” can be explained by these regions' knowledge capital. Turning to the policy implications of their argument, they call for an education system that develops effective accountability, promotes choice and competition, and provides direct rewards for good performance.

Download or read book Inequality and Growth written by Theo S. Eicher and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays exploring the relationship between economic growth and inequality and the implications for policy makers.

Download or read book The Knowledge Economy written by Roberto Mangabeira Unger and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revolutionary account of the transformative potential of the knowledge economy Adam Smith and Karl Marx recognized that the best way to understand the economy is to study the most advanced practice of production. Today that practice is no longer conventional manufacturing: it is the radically innovative vanguard known as the knowledge economy. In every part of the production system it remains a fringe excluding the vast majority of workers and businesses. This book explores the hidden nature of the knowledge economy and its possible futures. The confinement of the knowledge economy to these insular vanguards has become a driver of economic stagnation and inequality throughout the world. Traditional mass production has stopped working as a shortcut to economic growth. But the alternative—a deepened and socially inclusive form of the knowledge economy—continues to lie beyond reach in even the richest countries. The shape of contemporary politics on both the left and the right reflects a failure to come to terms with this dilemma and to overcome it. Unger explains the knowledge economy in the truncated and confined form that it has today and proposes the way to a knowledge economy for the many: changes not just in economic institutions but also in education, culture, and politics. Just as Smith and Marx did in their time, he uses an understanding of the most advanced practice of production to rethink both economics and the economy as a whole.

Download or read book Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality written by Ms.Era Dabla-Norris and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper analyzes the extent of income inequality from a global perspective, its drivers, and what to do about it. The drivers of inequality vary widely amongst countries, with some common drivers being the skill premium associated with technical change and globalization, weakening protection for labor, and lack of financial inclusion in developing countries. We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not trickle down. This suggests that policies need to be country specific but should focus on raising the income share of the poor, and ensuring there is no hollowing out of the middle class. To tackle inequality, financial inclusion is imperative in emerging and developing countries while in advanced economies, policies should focus on raising human capital and skills and making tax systems more progressive.

Download or read book Inequality of Opportunity Inequality of Income and Economic Growth written by Mr.Shekhar Aiyar and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2019-02-15 with total page 23 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We posit that the relationship between income inequality and economic growth is mediated by the level of equality of opportunity, which we identify with intergenerational mobility. In economies characterized by intergenerational rigidities, an increase in income inequality has persistent effects—for example by hindering human capital accumulation— thereby retarding future growth disproportionately. We use several recently developed internationally comparable measures of intergenerational mobility to confirm that the negative impact of income inequality on growth is higher the lower is intergenerational mobility. Our results suggest that omitting intergenerational mobility leads to misspecification, shedding light on why the empirical literature on income inequality and growth has been so inconclusive.

Download or read book Links Between Growth Inequality and Poverty A Survey written by Ms. Valerie Cerra and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2021-03-12 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is there a tradeoff between raising growth and reducing inequality and poverty? This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the complex links between growth, inequality, and poverty, with causation going in both directions. The evidence suggests that growth can be effective in reducing poverty, but its impact on inequality is ambiguous and depends on the underlying sources of growth. The impact of poverty and inequality on growth is likewise ambiguous, as several channels mediate the relationship. But most plausible mechanisms suggest that poverty and inequality reduce growth, at least in the long run. Policies play a role in shaping these relationships and those designed to improve equality of opportunity can simultaneously improve inclusiveness and growth.

Download or read book Imagine There s No Country written by Surjit Bhalla and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2002-09-24 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new era of globalization, which began in the 1980s, brought about a significant decline in costs of transportation, communication, and production; considerably improved intercountry competitiveness; and broke down trade and cultural barriers among countries. The concept of a sovereign nation has been increasingly questioned in recent years. Some, indeed, have imagined a world without boundaries, without countries. Others who doubt the benefits of globalization have called for increased protectionism and greater regulation of economic activity. Has globalization made the world grow faster? Has poverty declined at a faster pace during globalization? If yes, why? If not, is it because the growth rate was lower, or because inequality worsened, or both? Who gained from globalization? Was it the elite in both the developed and developing world? What about the middle class? Who are they? How did they benefit from (or lose to) the forces of globalization? This comprehensive study firmly debunks several popular myths such as the belief that globalization has resulted in lower overall growth rates for poor countries, increasing world inequality, and stagnating poverty levels. Through rigorous, integrated methodologies and an enhanced dataset, the author, Surjit Bhalla, answers some of the most pressing policy issues confronting us today.

Download or read book Macroeconomic Inequality from Reagan to Trump written by Lance Taylor and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-20 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative approach to measuring inequality providing the first full integration of distributional and macro level data for the US.

Download or read book Shifting Paradigms written by Zia Qureshi and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addressing the big questions about how technological change is transforming economies and societies Rapid technological change—likely to accelerate as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic—is reshaping economies and how they grow. But change also causes disruption, creates winners and losers, and produces social stress. This book examines the challenges of digital transformation and suggests how creative policies can make it more productive and inclusive. Shifting Paradigms is the second book on technological change produced by a joint research project of the Brookings Institution and the Korea Development Institute. Contributors are experts from the United States, Europe, and Korea. The first volume, Growth in a Time of Change, was published by Brookings in February 2020. The book's underlying thesis is that the future is arriving faster than expected. Long-accepted paradigms about economic growth are changing as digital technologies transform markets and nearly every aspect of business and work. Change will only intensify with advances in artificial intelligence and other innovations. Investors, business leaders, workers, and public officials face many questions. Is rising market concentration inevitable with the new technologies or can their benefits be more widely shared? How can the promise of FinTech be captured while managing risks? Should workers fear the new automation? Are technology-driven shifts in business and work causing income inequality to rise? How should public policy respond? Shifting Paradigms addresses these questions in an engaging manner for anyone interested in understanding how the economic and social agenda is being transformed by today's winds of change.

Download or read book After Piketty written by Heather Boushey and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-08 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year “An intellectual excursion of a kind rarely offered by modern economics.” —Foreign Affairs Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is the most widely discussed work of economics in recent years. But are its analyses of inequality and economic growth on target? Where should researchers go from there in exploring the ideas Piketty pushed to the forefront of global conversation? A cast of leading economists and other social scientists—including Emmanuel Saez, Branko Milanovic, Laura Tyson, and Michael Spence—tackle these questions in dialogue with Piketty. “A fantastic introduction to Piketty’s main argument in Capital, and to some of the main criticisms, including doubt that his key equation...showing that returns on capital grow faster than the economy—will hold true in the long run.” —Nature “Piketty’s work...laid bare just how ill-equipped our existing frameworks are for understanding, predicting, and changing inequality. This extraordinary collection shows that our most nimble social scientists are responding to the challenge.” —Justin Wolfers, University of Michigan

Download or read book The Political Economy of Collective Action Inequality and Development written by William D. Ferguson and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how a society that is trapped in stagnation might initiate and sustain economic and political development. In this context, progress requires the reform of existing arrangements, along with the complementary evolution of informal institutions. It involves enhancing state capacity, balancing broad avenues for political input, and limiting concentrated private and public power. This juggling act can only be accomplished by resolving collective-action problems (CAPs), which arise when individuals pursue interests that generate undesirable outcomes for society at large. Merging and extending key perspectives on CAPs, inequality, and development, this book constructs a flexible framework to investigate these complex issues. By probing four basic hypotheses related to knowledge production, distribution, power, and innovation, William D. Ferguson offers an analytical foundation for comparing and evaluating approaches to development policy. Navigating the theoretical terrain that lies between simplistic hierarchies of causality and idiosyncratic case studies, this book promises an analytical lens for examining the interactions between inequality and development. Scholars and researchers across economic development and political economy will find it to be a highly useful guide.

Download or read book Inequality Matters written by James Lardner and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cautionary volume of essays by leading scholars and activists examines the pervasive consequences of economic inequality in America, drawing on current research to explore such issues as the causes and dimensions of inequality, the persistence of racial disparities, the erosion of democracy and community, and inequality as a moral and religious problem. 12,000 first printing.

Download or read book Inequality and Development Challenges written by Maria Clara Couto Soares and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2018-10-24 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This series of books brings together results of an extensive research programme on aspects of the national systems of innovation (NSI) in the five BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. It provides a comprehensive and comparative examination of the challenges and opportunities faced by these dynamic and emerging economies. In discussing the impact of innovation with respect to economic, geopolitical, socio-cultural, institutional, and technological systems, it reveals the possibilities of new development paradigms for equitable and sustainable growth. This volume analyses the co-evolution of inequality and NSI across the BRICS economies. It reveals the multi-dimensional character of inequality, in going beyond its income aspect to include assets, access to basic services, infrastructure, knowledge, race, gender, ethnicity and geographic location. In advancing valuable policy recommendations, the book argues that inequalities must be factored in development strategies given that benefits of innovation are not automatically distributed equally. Original and detailed data, together with expert analyses on wide-ranging issues, make this book an invaluable resource for researchers and scholars in economics, development studies and political science, in addition to policy-makers and development practitioners interested in the BRICS countries.

Download or read book Unequal Gains written by Peter H. Lindert and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book that rewrites the history of American prosperity and inequality Unequal Gains offers a radically new understanding of the economic evolution of the United States, providing a complete picture of the uneven progress of America from colonial times to today. While other economic historians base their accounts on American wealth, Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson focus instead on income—and the result is a bold reassessment of the American economic experience. America has been exceptional in its rising inequality after an egalitarian start, but not in its long-run growth. America had already achieved world income leadership by 1700, not just in the twentieth century as is commonly thought. Long before independence, American colonists enjoyed higher living standards than Britain—and America's income advantage today is no greater than it was three hundred years ago. But that advantage was lost during the Revolution, lost again during the Civil War, and lost a third time during the Great Depression, though it was regained after each crisis. In addition, Lindert and Williamson show how income inequality among Americans rose steeply in two great waves—from 1774 to 1860 and from the 1970s to today—rising more than in any other wealthy nation in the world. Unequal Gains also demonstrates how the widening income gaps have always touched every social group, from the richest to the poorest. The book sheds critical light on the forces that shaped American income history, and situates that history in a broad global context. Economic writing at its most stimulating, Unequal Gains provides a vitally needed perspective on who has benefited most from American growth, and why.

Download or read book Creating a Learning Society written by Joseph E. Stiglitz and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A superb new understanding of the dynamic economy as a learning society, one that goes well beyond the usual treatment of education, training, and R&D.”—Robert Kuttner, author of The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy Since its publication Creating a Learning Society has served as an effective tool for those who advocate government policies to advance science and technology. It shows persuasively how enormous increases in our standard of living have been the result of learning how to learn, and it explains how advanced and developing countries alike can model a new learning economy on this example. Creating a Learning Society: Reader’s Edition uses accessible language to focus on the work’s central message and policy prescriptions. As the book makes clear, creating a learning society requires good governmental policy in trade, industry, intellectual property, and other important areas. The text’s central thesis—that every policy affects learning—is critical for governments unaware of the innovative ways they can propel their economies forward. “Profound and dazzling. In their new book, Joseph E. Stiglitz and Bruce C. Greenwald study the human wish to learn and our ability to learn and so uncover the processes that relate the institutions we devise and the accompanying processes that drive the production, dissemination, and use of knowledge . . . This is social science at its best.”—Partha Dasgupta, University of Cambridge “An impressive tour de force, from the theory of the firm all the way to long-term development, guided by the focus on knowledge and learning . . . This is an ambitious book with far-reaching policy implications.”—Giovanni Dosi, director, Institute of Economics, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna “[A] sweeping work of macroeconomic theory.”—Harvard Business Review