Results by title

This book takes on one of the great questions of the day: Why are some countries enormously rich and others so heartbreakingly poor?

Henry J. Bruton organizes the discussion around three basic ideas. The first is that well-being reflects not only the availability and distribution of goods and services, but also employment, values, institutions, and quality of preferences. The second is that ignorance is ubiquitous; hence growth of well-being depends primarily on commitments to searching and learning. The extent of such commitments is embedded in deep-seated characteristics of the society, its history, and the degree to which it can look ahead. The third is that economic policy-making is largely a matter of muddling through; furthermore, the idea that an economy can be assumed to be in a general equilibrium and can therefore be left to itself must be rejected. The author explores these ideas and their implications for the processes of growth and for policies to facilitate that growth.

The book breaks new ground in its emphasis on ignorance and learning and its generalized definition of well-being. Drawing from contemporary work in evolutionary economics, the economics of technological change, analytical economic history, and the new political economy, this work should be of interest to historians, sociologists, and students of technology, as well as economists. While directly concerned with development, it has implications for labor, trade, economic history, and industrial organization.

Henry J. Bruton is Professor of Economics, Williams College.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the countries of East-Central Europe embarked on a journey to transform themselves into democratic capitalist societies. Their governments searched for strategies that would allow them to pursue radical market reforms within the context of nascent democratic politics. Poland adopted a neoliberal strategy that attempted to push through as much reform as possible before an antireform backlash could occur. In the Czech Republic, a social liberal strategy for transformation attempted to combine neoliberal macro-economic policies with social democratic measures designed to avert such a backlash.
A detailed analysis of Poland and the Czech Republic suggests that alternation between strategies has been the secret to the success of East-Central European countries.
This comparative case analysis identifies the significance of reform mistakes during transition and the corrective benefits of policy alternation, its claims illustrated with an in-depth study of privatization policy in the two countries.
Mitchell A. Orenstein delves into the historic struggle to build capitalism and democracy during a decade of post- communist transition in East-Central Europe and develops a model that explains why democratic policy alternation may accelerate policy learning under conditions of uncertainty and constraint.
Out of the Red is accessible to a general audience and as such is suitable for both graduate and undergraduate courses on political economy. It will be of particular interest to economists, political scientists, sociologists, students of postcommunism, and anyone interested in the relations between capitalism and democracy in the contemporary world.
Mitchell A. Orenstein is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Syracuse University.