A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2016
Today, nations increasingly carry out geopolitical combat through economic means. Policies governing everything from trade and investment to energy and exchange rates are wielded as tools to win diplomatic allies, punish adversaries, and coerce those in between. Not so in the United States, however. America still too often reaches for the gun over the purse to advance its interests abroad. The result is a playing field sharply tilting against the United States.
“Geoeconomics, the use of economic instruments to advance foreign policy goals, has long been a staple of great-power politics. In this impressive policy manifesto, Blackwill and Harris argue that in recent decades, the United States has tended to neglect this form of statecraft, while China, Russia, and other illiberal states have increasingly employed it to Washington’s disadvantage.”
—G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs
“A readable and lucid primer…The book defines the extensive topic and opens readers’ eyes to its prevalence throughout history…[Presidential] candidates who care more about protecting American interests would be wise to heed the advice of War by Other Means and take our geoeconomic toolkit more seriously.
—Jordan Schneider, Weekly Standard
Government has become a refuge, and a relic, of America’s crumbling middle-class economy. As the public and private worlds of work have veered in different directions, the gaps between them are warping government work in unintended ways.
Three decades of economic turbulence have rendered American workplaces more demanding and less secure, more rewarding for high-end workers and punishing for workers without advanced skills. This workplace revolution, however, has largely bypassed government. Public employees—representing roughly one-sixth of the total workforce—still work under the conditions of dampened risk and constrained opportunity that marked most of the economy during the middle-class boom following World War II.
The divergent paths of public and private employment have intensified a long-standing pattern: elite workers spurn public jobs, while less skilled workers cling to government work as a refuge from a harsh private economy. The first trend creates a chronic talent deficit in the public sector. The second trend makes the government workplace rigid and resistant to change. And both contribute to shortfalls in public-sector performance.
The Warping of Government Work documents government’s isolation from the rest of the American economy and arrays the stark choices we confront for narrowing, or accommodating, the divide between public and private work.
What makes women sick? To an Ecuadorean woman, it’s nervios from constant worry about her children’s illnesses. To a woman working in a New Mexico electronics factory, it’s the solvents that leave her with a form of dementia. To a Ugandan woman, it’s HIV from her husband's sleeping with the widow of an AIDS patient. To a Bangladeshi woman, it’s a fatal infection following an IUD insertion. What they all share is a recognition that their sickness is somehow caused by situations they face every day at home and at work.
In this clearly written and compelling book, Lesley Doyal investigates the effects of social, economic, and cultural conditions on women’s health. The “fault line” of gender that continues to divide all societies has, Doyal demonstrates, profound and pervasive consequences for the health of women throughout the world. Her broad synthesis highlights variations between men and women in patterns of health and illness, and it identifies inequalities in medical care that separate groups of women from each other. Doyal’s wide-ranging arguments, her wealth of data, her use of women’s voices from many cultures—and her examples of women mobilizing to find their own solutions—make this book required reading for everyone concerned with women’s health.
What makes women sick? To an Ecuadorean woman, it’s nervios from constant worry about her children’s illnesses. To a woman working in a New Mexico electronics factory, it’s the solvents that leave her with a form of dementia. To a Ugandan woman, it’s HIV from her husband's sleeping with the widow of an AIDS patient. To a Bangladeshi woman, it’s a fatal infection following an IUD insertion. What they all share is a recognition that their sickness is somehow caused by situations they face every day at home and at work.
In this clearly written and compelling book, Lesley Doyal investigates the effects of social, economic, and cultural conditions on women’s health. The “fault line” of gender that continues to divide all societies has, Doyal demonstrates, profound and pervasive consequences for the health of women throughout the world. Her broad synthesis highlights variations between men and women in patterns of health and illness, and it identifies inequalities in medical care that separate groups of women from each other. Doyal’s wide-ranging arguments, her wealth of data, her use of women’s voices from many cultures—and her examples of women mobilizing to find their own solutions—make this book required reading for everyone concerned with women’s health.
Among all the decentralized authoritarian countries, China is distinctive not only because of its emergence as one of the largest foreign direct investment (FDI) recipient countries with one of the highest levels of fiscal decentralization, but also because of the combination of its fiscal decentralization and the cadre promotion system as incentive institutions for attracting FDI inflows. China is an important case to empirically investigate the impact of fiscal autonomy on adversarial investment because it has become the largest investment destination of its long-term adversary, Taiwan, with Taiwanese FDI being among the largest FDI in mainland China. Given the special role played by local Chinese governments in attracting and hosting Taiwanese FDI, it is important to study the differences between where Taiwanese FDI and other FDI goes.
Given the uniqueness of the China case and that of Taiwanese investment in mainland China, this book explores the following questions. What determines where FDI goes in authoritarian countries like China? Fiscal decentralization has been argued to be a driving force of skyrocketing FDI inflows in China due to its impact on local governments’ incentives. However, is the impact of fiscal autonomy on FDI monolithic with the dynamically changing levels of FDI inflows at the lower administrative levels in China, especially with its special cadre management system? Does the impact of fiscal decentralization on FDI strengthen or weaken or stay the same when attracting FDI inflows from adversarial states? And what are the implications of such adversarial investment—especially as it diffuses from coastal cities to the interior regions, or from key cities to peripheral regions—of decentralized authoritarian countries targeted by this investment?
“Deep, informed, and reeks of common sense.”
—Norman Ornstein
“It is now beyond debate that rising inequality is not only leaving millions of Americans living on a sharp edge but also is threatening our democracy…For activists and scholars alike who are struggling to create a more equitable society, this is an essential read.”
—David Gergen
We are in an age of crisis. That much we can agree on. But a crisis of what, exactly? And how do we get out of it?
In a follow up to their influential and much debated Death by a Thousand Cuts, Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro focus on what really worries people: not what the rich are making or the government is taking from them but their own insecurity. Americans are worried about losing their jobs, their status, and the safety of their communities. They fear the wolf at the door. The solution is not protectionism or class warfare but better jobs, higher wages, greater protection for families suffering from unemployment, better health insurance, and higher quality childcare. And it turns out those goals are more achievable than you might think. The Wolf at the Door is one of those rare books that doesn’t just diagnose our problems, it shows how to address them.
“This is a terrific book, original, erudite, and superbly well-informed, and full of new wisdom about what might and what might not help the majority of Americans who have not shared in our growing prosperity, but are left facing the wolf at the door…Everyone interested in public policy should read this book.”
—Angus Deaton, Princeton University
“Graetz and Shapiro wrestle with a fundamental question of our day: How do we address a system that makes too many Americans anxious that economic security is slipping out of reach? Their cogent call for sensible and achievable policies…should be read by progressives and conservatives alike.”
—Jacob J. Lew, former Secretary of the Treasury
Written by a top scholar on social security in Latin America and the Caribbean, this book assesses the effects of the world economic crisis on social security and welfare in the region. Drawing on the impact of and lessons from previous crises, Carmelo Mesa-Lago identifies the strengths and weakness of Latin American social security before the current global crisis. He evaluates the event's actual and potential effects on pensions, health care, and social assistance programs, based on a taxonomy of three groups of countries.
The book ends with a summary of policies adopted by some countries and the author's own recommendations on social policies to lessen the adverse outcomes of the financial crisis. Latin America's pioneering social-welfare reforms make this book important for other regions of the world, both developed and developing.
World Inequality Report 2018 is the most authoritative and up-to-date account of global trends in inequality. Researched, compiled, and written by a team of the world’s leading economists of inequality, it presents—with unrivaled clarity and depth—information and analysis that will be vital to policy makers and scholars everywhere.
Inequality has taken center stage in public debate as the wealthiest people in most parts of the world have seen their share of the economy soar relative to that of others, many of whom, especially in the West, have experienced stagnation. The resulting political and social pressures have posed harsh new challenges for governments and created a pressing demand for reliable data. The World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics and the University of California, Berkeley, has answered this call by coordinating research into the latest trends in the accumulation and distribution of income and wealth on every continent. This inaugural report analyzes the Lab’s findings, which include data from major countries where information has traditionally been difficult to acquire, such as China, India, and Brazil. Among nations, inequality has been decreasing as traditionally poor countries’ economies have caught up with the West. The report shows, however, that inequality has been steadily deepening within almost every nation, though national trajectories vary, suggesting the importance of institutional and policy frameworks in shaping inequality.
World Inequality Report 2018 will be a key document for anyone concerned about one of the most imperative and contentious subjects in contemporary politics and economics.
Produced by a team of world-leading economists, this is the benchmark account of recent and historical trends in inequality.
World Inequality Report 2022 is the most authoritative and comprehensive account available of global trends in inequality. Researched, compiled, and written by a team of world-leading economists, the report builds on the pioneering edition of 2018 to provide policy makers and scholars everywhere up-to-date information about an ever broader range of countries and about forms of inequality that researchers have previously ignored or found hard to trace.
Over the past decade, inequality has taken center stage in public debate as the wealthiest people in most parts of the world have seen their share of the economy soar relative to that of others. The resulting political and social pressures have posed harsh new challenges for governments and created a pressing demand for reliable data. The World Inequality Lab, housed at the Paris School of Economics and the University of California, Berkeley, has answered this call by coordinating research into the latest trends in the accumulation and distribution of income and wealth on every continent. This new report not only extends the lab’s international reach but provides crucial new information about the history of inequality, gender inequality, environmental inequalities, and trends in international tax reform and redistribution.
World Inequality Report 2022 will be a key document for anyone concerned about one of the most imperative and contentious subjects in contemporary politics and economics.
An ambitious account of the corrosion of liberal democracy in rich and poor countries alike, arguing that antidemocratic sentiment reflects fear of material and cultural loss, not a critique of liberalism’s failure to deliver equality, and suggesting possible ways out.
The retreat of liberal democracy in the twenty-first century has been impossible to ignore. From Wisconsin to Warsaw, Budapest to Bangalore, the public is turning against pluralism and liberal institutions and instead professing unapologetic nationalism and majoritarianism. Critics of inequality argue that this is a predictable response to failures of capitalism and liberalism, but Pranab Bardhan, a development economist, sees things differently. The problem is not inequality but insecurity—financial and cultural.
Bardhan notes that antidemocratic movements have taken root globally in a wide range of demographic and socioeconomic groups. In the United States, older, less-educated, rural populations have withdrawn from democracy. But in India, the prevailing Hindu Nationalists enjoy the support of educated, aspirational urban youth. And in Europe, antidemocratic populists firmly back the welfare state (but for nonimmigrants). What is consistent among antidemocrats is fear of losing what they have. That could be money but is most often national pride and culture and the comfort of tradition.
A World of Insecurity argues for context-sensitive responses. Some, like universal basic income schemes, are better suited to poor countries. Others, like worker empowerment and international coordination, have broader appeal. But improving material security won’t be enough to sustain democracy. Nor, Bardhan writes, should we be tempted by the ultimately hollow lure of China’s authoritarian model. He urges liberals to adopt at least a grudging respect for fellow citizens’ local attachments. By affirming civic forms of community pride, we might hope to temper cultural anxieties before they become pathological.
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