The Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Solow directs his attention here to one of today's most controversial social issues: how to get people off welfare and into jobs. With characteristic eloquence, wit, and rigor, Solow condemns the welfare reforms recently passed by Congress and President Clinton for confronting welfare recipients with an unworkable choice--finding work in the current labor market or losing benefits. He argues that the only practical and fair way to move recipients to...

It has long been recognized that an improved standard of living results from advances in technology, not from the accumulation of capital. It has also become clear that what truly separates developed from less-developed countries is not just a gap in resources or output but a gap in knowledge. In fact, the pace at which developing countries grow is largely a function of the pace at which they close that gap.Thus, to understand how countries grow and develop, it is essential to know...

Nobel Laureate Robert Solow explores how changes in social accounting practice could contribute to more rational debate and action in crafting economic and environmental policy. A thoughtful work about the wise use of society's natural resources, intergenerational equity, and the translation of ideas about sustainability into real policy.

Designed primarily for economists and those interested in management economics who are not necessarily accomplished mathematicians, this text offers a clear, concise exposition of the relationship of linear programming to standard economic analysis. The research and writing were supported by The RAND Corporation in the late 1950s.Linear programming has been one of the most important postwar developments in economic theory, but until publication of the present volume, no text offered...

Why the United States lags behind other industrialized countries in sharing the benefits of innovation with workers and how we can remedy the problem.The United States has too many low-quality, low-wage jobs. Every country has its share, but those in the United States are especially poorly paid and often without benefits. Meanwhile, overall productivity increases steadily and new technology has transformed large parts of the economy, enhancing the skills and payche...

A forceful argument against America's vicious circle of growing inequality by the Nobel Prize–winning economist.The top 1 percent of Americans control 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. And, as Joseph E. Stiglitz explains, while those at the top enjoy the best health care, education, and benefits of wealth, they fail to realize that “their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.”Stiglitz draws on his deep understanding of economics to show that growing inequali...

The world is a better place than it used to be. People are wealthier and healthier, and live longer lives. Yet the escapes from destitution by so many have left gaping inequalities between people and between nations. In The Great Escape, Angus Deaton--one of the foremost experts on economic development and on poverty--tells the remarkable story of how, starting 250 years ago, some parts of the world began to experience sustained progress, opening up gaps and setting the stage for ...

A call-to-arms from Nobel Prize–winning economist and best-selling author Paul Krugman.The Great Recession is more than four years old—and counting. Yet, as Paul Krugman points out in this powerful volley, "Nations rich in resources, talent, and knowledge—all the ingredients for prosperity and a decent standard of living for all—remain in a state of intense pain."How bad have things gotten? How did we get stuck in what now can only be called a depression? And above all, how...

NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • From two winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, “who have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity”“A wildly ambitious work that hopscotches through history and around the world to answer the very big question of why some countries get rich and others don’t.”—The New York TimesFINALIST: Financial T...

Religious people have been known to push their beliefs onto others; in fact several religions require it. This book utilizes reason, logic, some psychology, and the experiences of someone who has been in several hundred religious debates with believers, mainly those of the Judeo-Christian faiths. Throughout this book, you will be presented with several of the most common arguments that believers utilize in order to attempt to convert people to followers; then you will be given a response t...

Conservatives today in both Europe and the United States have succeeded in casting government spending as reckless wastefulness that has made the economy worse. In contrast, they have advanced a policy of draconian budget cuts--austerity--to solve the financial crisis. We are told that we have all lived beyond our means and now need to tighten our belts. This view conveniently forgets where all that debt came from. Not from an orgy of government spending, but as the direct result of bailin...

**“A valuable primer on foreign policy: a primer that concerned citizens of all political persuasions—not to mention the president and his advisers—could benefit from reading.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York TimesAn examination of a world increasingly defined by disorder and a United States unable to shape the world in its image, from the president of the Council on Foreign Relations**Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. The rules, policies, and institutions...