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Sheila Jasanoff

A wide-raging exploration of the place of uncertainty in our emotional and political lives.  From climate change to the pandemic, uncertainty looms large over our public and personal lives. It is also the core feature of democratic life: while democratic governance seemingly heightens individual power, it exposes our life chances to the uncertain activity of others. We do not exercise control over those to whom we appeal, and yet we are constantly dependent on their actions for the goods in life we seek.  Sheila Jasanoff opens a forum on uncertainty and democracy in this volume, arguing that ideas around our autonomy, our freedom, and our individual agency, particularly in the United States, obscure our dependence on others in so many ways. To recognize this political emotion is to start to see the transformative potential in uncertainty.  The debate that follows explores the ideas about uncertainty and experts in a democracy, as well its scientific, philosophic, and emotional aspects.

Henry Lee, Daniel P. Schrag, Matthew Bunn, Wang Pu, Wei Peng, Michael Davidson and Mao Zhimin

Climate change is a key problem of the 21st century. China, as the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has committed to stabilize its current emissions and dramatically increase the share of electricity production from non-fossil fuels by 2030. However, this is only a first step: in the longer term, China needs to aggressively strive to reach a goal of zero-emissions. Through detailed discussions of electricity pricing, electric vehicle policies, nuclear energy policies, and renewable energy policies, this book reviews how near-term climate and energy policies can affect long-term decarbonization pathways beyond 2030, building the foundations for decarbonization in advance of its realization. Focusing primarily on the electricity sector in China - the main battleground for decarbonization over the next century – it provides a valuable resource for researchers and policymakers, as well as energy and climate experts.

Maxims for Thinking Analytically: The wisdom of legendary Harvard Professor Richard Zeckhauser

Dan Levy

This book will help you think more analytically. Doing so will enable you to better understand the world around you, to make smarter decisions, and to ultimately live a more fulfilling life. It draws on the maxims of Richard Zeckhauser, a legendary Harvard professor, who has helped hundreds of students and colleagues progress toward these goals. These maxims, one-sentence nuggets of wisdom that capture key principles for clear and effective thinking, are illustrated with practical examples from Richard’s colleagues and students. From these examples, you will learn how one colleague saved money on her wedding by thinking probabilistically, how Richard and his wife Sally made an agonizing health decision that significantly boosted Sally’s survival probabilities, and how the prime minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong, used a maxim he learned from Richard 40 years ago to understand and deal with COVID-19 in his nation. This book provides vital insights for anyone who wants to think more effectively about the world. The author, Dan Levy, teaches at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he has been a close faculty colleague and mentee of Richard Zeckhauser for more than 15 years

Cass R. Sunstein

We've all had to fight our way through administrative sludge—filling out complicated online forms, mailing in paperwork, standing in line at the motor vehicle registry. This kind of red tape is a nuisance, but, as Cass Sunstein shows in Sludge, it can also impair health, reduce growth, entrench poverty, and exacerbate inequality. Confronted by sludge, people just give up—and lose a promised outcome: a visa, a job, a permit, an educational opportunity, necessary medical help. In this lively and entertaining look at the terribleness of sludge, Sunstein explains what we can do to reduce it. Because of sludge, Sunstein explains, too many people don't receive benefits to which they are entitled. Sludge even prevents many people from exercising their constitutional rights—when, for example, barriers to voting in an election are too high. (A Sludge Reduction Act would be a Voting Rights Act.) Sunstein takes readers on a tour of the not-so-wonderful world of sludge, describes justifications for certain kinds of sludge, and proposes “Sludge Audits” as a way to measure the effects of sludge. On balance, Sunstein argues, sludge infringes on human dignity, making people feel that their time and even their lives don't matter. We must do better.

Cass R. Sunstein

Lying has been with us from time immemorial. Yet today is different-and in many respects worse. All over the world, people are circulating damaging lies, and these falsehoods are amplified as never before through powerful social media platforms that reach billions. Liars are saying that COVID-19 is a hoax. They are claiming that vaccines cause autism. They are lying about public officials and about people who aspire to high office. They are lying about their friends and neighbors. They are trying to sell products on the basis of untruths. Unfriendly governments, including Russia, are circulating lies in order to destabilize other nations, including the United Kingdom and the United States. In the face of those problems, the renowned legal scholar Cass Sunstein probes the fundamental question of how we can deter lies while also protecting freedom of speech.

Karen Eggleston, John D. Donahue and Richard J. Zeckhauser

The governments of China and the United States - despite profound differences in history, culture, economic structure, and political ideology - both engage the private sector in the pursuit of public value. This book employs the term collaborative governance to describe relationships where neither the public nor private party is fully in control, arguing that such shared discretion is needed to deliver value to citizens. This concept is exemplified across a wide range of policy arenas, such as constructing high speed rail, hosting the Olympics, building human capital, and managing the healthcare system. This book will help decision-makers apply the principles of collaborative governance to effectively serve the public, and will enable China and the United States to learn from each other's experiences. It will empower public decision-makers to more wisely engage the private sector. The book's overarching conclusion is that transparency is the key to the legitimate growth of collaborative governance.

Edited by Marlene Amstad

The Chinese economy is one of the most important in the world, and its success is driven in large part by its financial system. Though closely scrutinized, this system is poorly understood and vastly different than those in the West. The Handbook of China’s Financial System will serve as a standard reference guide and invaluable resource to the workings of this critical institution.

The handbook looks in depth at the central aspects of the system, including banking, bonds, the stock market, asset management, the pension system, and financial technology. Each chapter is written by leading experts in the field, and the contributors represent a unique mix of scholars and policymakers, many with firsthand knowledge of setting and carrying out Chinese financial policy. The first authoritative volume on China’s financial system, this handbook sheds new light on how it developed, how it works, and the prospects and direction of significant reforms to come.

Malcolm Sparrow

The modern regulatory world is crowded with ideas about different regulatory approaches including, among others: performance-based regulation, self-regulation, light-touch regulation, right-touch regulation, safety management systems, 3rd party regulation, co-regulation, prescriptive regulation, risk-based regulation, a harm-reduction approach, problem-solving, and responsive regulation.

Are these various terms merely rhetorical, or aspirational? Do they signal the political preferences of the times? Which of them actually affect operations?

Evolution or Revolution: Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy After the Great Recession

Olivier Blanchard and Lawrence H. Summers, editors

The Great Depression led to the Keynesian revolution and dramatic shifts in macroeconomic theory and macroeconomic policy. Similarly, the stagflation of the 1970s led to the adoption of the natural rate hypothesis and to a major reassessment of the role of macroeconomic policy. Should the financial crisis and the Great Recession lead to yet another major reassessment, to another intellectual revolution? Will it? If so, what form should it, or will it, take? These are the questions taken up in this book, in a series of contributions by policymakers and academics.

The contributors discuss the complex role of the financial sector, the relative roles of monetary and fiscal policy, the limits of monetary policy to address financial stability, the need for fiscal policy to play a more active role in stabilization, and the relative roles of financial regulation and macroprudential tools. The general message is a warning against going back to precrisis ways—to narrow inflation targeting, little use of fiscal policy for stabilization, and insufficient financial regulation.

Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream: How Technology Is Transforming Lending and Shaping a New Era of Small Business Opportunity

Karen G. Mills

Small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy. They are the biggest job creators and offer a path to the American Dream. But for many, it is difficult to get the capital they need to operate and succeed. In the Great Recession, access to capital for small businesses froze, and in the aftermath, many community banks shuttered their doors and other lenders that had weathered the storm turned to more profitable avenues. For years after the financial crisis, the outlook for many small businesses was bleak. But then a new dawn of financial technology, or “fintech,” emerged.

Beginning in 2010, new fintech entrepreneurs recognized the gaps in the small business lending market and revolutionized the customer experience for small business owners. Instead of Xeroxing a pile of paperwork and waiting weeks for an answer, small businesses filled out applications online and heard back within hours, sometimes even minutes. Banks scrambled to catch up. Technology companies like Amazon, PayPal, and Square entered the market, and new possibilities for even more transformative products and services began to appear.

In Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream, former U.S. Small Business Administrator and Senior Fellow at Harvard Business School, Karen G. Mills, focuses on the needs of small businesses for capital and how technology will transform the small business lending market. This is a market that has been plagued by frictions: it is hard for a lender to figure out which small businesses are creditworthy, and borrowers often don’t know how much money or what kind of loan they need. New streams of data have the power to illuminate the opaque nature of a small business’s finances, making it easier for them to weather bumpy cash flows and providing more transparency to potential lenders.

Mills charts how fintech has changed and will continue to change small business lending, and how financial innovation and wise regulation can restore a path to the American Dream. An ambitious book grappling with the broad significance of small business to the economy, the historical role of credit markets, the dynamics of innovation cycles, and the policy implications for regulation, Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream is relevant to bankers, fintech investors, and regulators; in fact, to anyone who is interested in the future of small business in America.

Valuing U.S. National Parks and Programs: America’s Best Investment

Linda J. Bilmes and John B. Loomis, editors

This book provides the first comprehensive economic valuation of US National Parks (including Monuments, Seashores, Lakeshores, Recreation Areas, Historic sites) and National Park Service (NPS) Programs.

The book develops a comprehensive framework to calculate the economic value of protected areas, with particular application to the U.S. National Park Service. The framework covers many benefits provided by NPS units and programs, including on-site visitation, carbon sequestration and intellectual property such as in education curricula and filming of movies/TV shows, with case studies of each included. Examples are drawn from studies in Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and cooperative stakeholder management of Chesapeake Bay. The editors conclude with a chapter on innovative approaches for sustainable funding of the NPS in its second century. The framework serves as a blueprint of methodologies for conservationists, government agencies, land trusts, economists and others to value public lands, historical sites, and related programs, such as education. The methodologies are relevant to local and state parks, wildlife refuges, and protected areas in developed and developing countries as well as to national parks around the world.

North Korea: Peace? Nuclear War?

William H. Overholt, Editor

The North Korean nuclear crisis presents the contemporary world’s greatest risk, not just of major war but most importantly of nuclear war. Despite its importance the crisis is being managed in a treacherous context of public ignorance and misinformation. Most Americans could not locate Korea on a map. This volume assembles the work of leading experts in the hope of dispelling the misinformation and lack of information. Every author in this volume writes from career-long study of Korea and personal experience in Korea.

Chapters include a broad-ranging Overview; Countering North Korea’s Carrot-and-Stick Strategy; Why These Negotiations with North Korea Could Work; What Makes Kim Jong Un Different?; Development Strategies Available to North Korea and Their Political Risks; The new leader, the new economic model; Can Moon Jae In hold it together domestically?; Thinking realistically about unification; China’s Policy toward North Korea; Japan’s View of Nuclear North Korea: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?; Alliance Management and Tension: Between “Fire and Fury” and Protecting Alliance Equities; The Role of Sanctions; The history & meaning of denuclearization; The vexations of verification; Could the Trump Administration achieve a breakthrough?; Missed Opportunities: Years of Suspicion, Brief Viable Trust; Hope and History.

Can Science Make Sense of Life?

Sheila Jasanoff

Since the discovery of the structure of DNA and the birth of the genetic age, a powerful vocabulary has emerged to express science’s growing command over the matter of life. Armed with knowledge of the code that governs all living things, biology and biotechnology are poised to edit, even rewrite, the texts of life to correct nature’s mistakes.

Yet, how far should the capacity to manipulate what life is at the molecular level authorize science to define what life is for? This book looks at flash points in law, politics, ethics, and culture to argue that science’s promises of perfectibility have gone too far. Science may have editorial control over the material elements of life, but it does not supersede the languages of sense-making that have helped define human values across millennia: the meanings of autonomy, integrity, and privacy; the bonds of kinship, family, and society; and the place of humans in nature.

China's Crisis of Success

William H. Overholt

China's Crisis of Success provides new perspectives on China's rise to superpower status, showing that China has reached a threshold where success has eliminated the conditions that enabled miraculous growth. Continued success requires re-invention of its economy and politics. The old economic strategy based on exports and infrastructure now piles up debt without producing sustainable economic growth, and Chinese society now resists the disruptive change that enabled earlier reforms. While China's leadership has produced a strategy for successful economic transition, it is struggling to manage the politics of implementing that strategy. After analyzing the economics of growth, William H. Overholt explores critical social issues of the transition, notably inequality, corruption, environmental degradation, and globalization. He argues that Xi Jinping is pursuing the riskiest political strategy of any important national leader. Alternative outcomes include continued impressive growth and political stability, Japanese-style stagnation, and a major political-economic crisis.

From Summits to Solutions

Jane Nelson (Chapter 4: Collective Action on Business Standards, Goals, and Metrics to Achieve Scale and Impact for the SDGs)

All 193 member nations of the United Nations agreed in September 2015 to adopt a set of seventeen “Sustainable Development Goals,” to be achieved by 2030. Each of the goals—in such areas as education and health care —is laudable in and of itself, and governments and organizations are working hard on them. But so far there is no overall, positive agenda of what new things need to be done to ensure the goals are achieved across all nations.

In a search of fresh approaches to the longstanding problems targeted by the Sustainable Development Goals, the Japan International Cooperation Agency and the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings mounted a collaborative research effort to advance implementation of Agenda 2030. This edited volume is the product of that effort.

The book approaches the UN’s goals through three broad lenses.

The first considers new approaches to capturing value. Examples include Nigeria’s first green bonds, practical methods to expand women’s economic opportunities, benchmarking to reflect business contributions to achieving the goals, new incentives for investment in infrastructure, and educational systems that promote cross-sector problem solving.

The second lens entails new approaches to targeting places, including oceans, rural areas, fast-growing developing cities, and the interlocking challenge of data systems, including geospatial information generated by satellites.

The third lens focuses on updating governance, broadly defined. Issues include how civil society can align with the SDG challenge; how an advanced economy like Canada can approach the goals at home and abroad; what needs to be done to foster new approaches for managing the global commons; and how can multilateral institutions for health and development finance evolve.

Unelected Power: The Quest for Legitimacy in Central Banking and the Regulatory State

Paul Tucker

Central bankers have emerged from the financial crisis as the third great pillar of unelected power alongside the judiciary and the military. They pull the regulatory and financial levers of our economic well-being, yet unlike democratically elected leaders, their power does not come directly from the people. Unelected Power lays out the principles needed to ensure that central bankers, technocrats, regulators, and other agents of the administrative state remain stewards of the common good and do not become overmighty citizens.

Paul Tucker draws on a wealth of personal experience from his many years in domestic and international policymaking to tackle the big issues raised by unelected power, and enriches his discussion with examples from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and the European Union. Blending economics, political theory, and public law, Tucker explores the necessary conditions for delegated but politically insulated power to be legitimate in the eyes of constitutional democracy and the rule of law. He explains why the solution must fit with how real-world government is structured, and why technocrats and their political overseers need incentives to make the system work as intended. Tucker explains how the regulatory state need not be a fourth branch of government free to steer by its own lights, and how central bankers can emulate the best of judicial self-restraint and become models of dispersed power.

Like it or not, unelected power has become a hallmark of modern government. This critically important book shows how to harness it to the people's purposes.

Pursuing Sustainability: A Guide to the Science and Practice

Pamela Matson, William C. Clark and Krister Andersson

Sustainability is a global imperative and a scientific challenge like no other. This concise guide provides students and practitioners with a strategic framework for linking knowledge with action in the pursuit of sustainable development, and serves as an invaluable companion to more narrowly focused courses dealing with sustainability in particular sectors such as energy, food, water, and housing, or in particular regions of the world. Written by leading experts, Pursuing Sustainability shows how more inclusive and interdisciplinary approaches and systems perspectives can help you achieve your sustainability objectives. It stresses the need for understanding how capital assets are linked to sustainability goals through the complex adaptive dynamics of social-environmental systems, how committed people can use governance processes to alter those dynamics, and how successful interventions can be shaped through collaborations among researchers and practitioners on the ground.

Marco Magnani

National-level policymaking in Europe has slowed, stalled, or failed when it comes to critical actions for spurring economic growth. In Creating Economic Growth: Lessons for Europe, Marco Magnani argues that local leaders, would-be leaders and citizen movers and shakers have an opportunity to rise to the occasion to implement a low-cost set of actions to spur growth. The author challenges feelings of economic malaise that taint the next generation's dreams of prosperity. Instead he advocates the need for people to leverage traditional strengths and commit themselves to making a difference. He provides examples of newfound vitality in locales around Europe and examines in detail his native Italy for policy weaknesses and champions of renewal. Magnani proposes a six-point comeback strategy for citizen catalysts, business leaders, organizers, and elected officials in cities, towns and provinces: build human and civic capital; unleash entrepreneurial creativity; spur new innovation; stimulate cultural creativity; leverage cultural diversity; and champion social mobility. This study provides a roadmap to a new dynamism and offers the theoretical and empirical evidence to prove it.

Oral Histories of Pioneers in Interactive Computing
John Cullinane

The oral histories of the pioneers of interactive computing have much to offer today’s Leaders in business, industry, and academia on how to get complex things done. After all, industry, government, and academia working together created the computer industry, which led to the Internet as we know it today. To do so, the pioneers had to get around the various “systems’ of the day that are always impediments to implementing new ideas. In their case, it was the voice dominated communications industry. For example, packet switching was invented to get around it. This was key to allowing incompatible computers to “talk” to each other across academia, and later industry, which would be the key to the Internet. Cullinane Corporation, the computer industry’s first successful software products company, benefitted from this technology as it focused on database software as the foundation for interactive computer systems for industry, government, and academia. As such, this book is a personal walk through the history that led to interactive computing as John Cuttinane witnessed it and participated in it. He has the help of the oral histories of some key pioneers, and others. Also, he organized and introduces it in a way that illustrates the close interaction of the various individuals and organizations involved in the evolution of interactive computing. These oral histories, including John’s, were drawn from the archives of over 300 such histories located at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota.

Dale Jorgenson, Richard Goettle, Mun S. Ho and Peter J. Wilcoxen

Energy utilization, especially from fossil fuels, creates hidden costs in the form of pollution and environmental damages. The costs are well documented but are hidden in the sense that they occur outside the market, are not reflected in market prices, and are not taken into account by energy users. Double Dividend presents a novel method for designing environmental taxes that correct market prices so that they reflect the true cost of energy. The resulting revenue can be used in reducing the burden of the overall tax system and improving the performance of the economy, creating the double dividend of the title. The authors simulate the impact of environmental taxes on the U.S. economy using their Intertemporal General Equilibrium Model (IGEM). This highly innovative model incorporates expectations about future prices and policies. The model is estimated econometrically from an extensive 50-year dataset to incorporate the heterogeneity of producers and consumers. This approach generates confidence intervals for the outcomes of changes in economic policies, a new feature for models used in analyzing energy and environmental policies. These outcomes include the welfare impacts on individual households, distinguished by demographic characteristics, and for society as a whole, decomposed between efficiency and equity.

Laurence Chandy, Akio Hosono, Homi Kharas, and Johannes Linn, eds.
Jane Nelson, contributing author

The global development community is teeming with different ideas and interventions to improve the lives of the world’s poorest people. Whether these succeed in having a transformative impact depends not just on their individual brilliance but on whether they can be brought to a scale where they reach millions of poor people. Getting to Scale explores what it takes to expand the reach of development solutions beyond an individual village or pilot program, but to poor people everywhere. Each of the essays in this book documents one or more contemporary case studies, which together provide a body of evidence on how scale can be pursued. It suggests that the challenge of scaling up can be divided into two: financing interventions at scale, and managing delivery to large numbers of beneficiaries. Neither governments, donors, charities, nor corporations are usually capable of overcoming these twin challenges alone, indicating that partnerships are key to success. Scaling up is mission critical if extreme poverty is to be vanquished in our lifetime. Getting to Scale provides an invaluable resource for development practitioners, analysts, and students on a topic that remains largely unexplored and poorly understood.

Robert Lawrence and Lawrence Edwards

In 1963, US President John F. Kennedy said that "a rising tide lifts all the boats. And a partnership, by definition, serves both parties, without domination or unfair advantage." US international economic policy since World War II has been based on the premise that foreign economic growth is in America's economic, as well as political and security, self-interest. The bursting of the speculative dot.com bubble, slowing US growth, and the global financial crisis and its aftermath, however, have led to radical changes in Americans' perceptions of the benefits of global trade. Many Americans believe that trade with emerging-market economies is the most important reason for US job loss, especially in manufacturing, is detrimental to American welfare and an important source of wage inequality. Several prominent economists have reinforced these public concerns. In this study, Lawrence Edwards and Robert Z. Lawrence confront these fears through an extensive survey of the empirical literature and in depth analyses of the evidence. Their conclusions contradict several popular theories about the negative impact of US trade with developing countries. They find considerable evidence that while adjusting to foreign economic growth does present America with challenges, growth in emerging-market economies is in America's economic interest. It is hard, of course, for Americans to become used to a world in which the preponderance of economic activity is located in Asia. But one of America s great strengths is its adaptability. And if it does adapt, the American economy can be buoyed by that rising tide.

John Ruggie

One of the most vexing human rights issues of our time has been how to protect the rights of individuals and communities worldwide in an age of globalization and multinational business. Indeed, from Indonesian sweatshops to oil-based violence in Nigeria, the challenges of regulating harmful corporate practices in some of the world’s most difficult regions long seemed insurmountable. Human rights groups and businesses were locked in a stalemate, unable to find common ground. In 2005, the United Nations appointed John Gerard Ruggie to the modest task of clarifying the main issues. Six years later, he had accomplished much more than that. Ruggie had developed his now-famous "Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights," which provided a road map for ensuring responsible global corporate practices. The principles were unanimously endorsed by the UN and embraced and implemented by other international bodies, businesses, governments, workers’ organizations, and human rights groups, keying a revolution in corporate social responsibility. Just Business tells the powerful story of how these landmark “Ruggie Rules” came to exist. Ruggie demonstrates how, to solve a seemingly unsolvable problem, he had to abandon many widespread and long-held understandings about the relationships between businesses, governments, rights, and law, and develop fresh ways of viewing the issues. He also takes us through the journey of assembling the right type of team, of witnessing the severity of the problem firsthand, and of pressing through the many obstacles such a daunting endeavor faced. Just Business is an illuminating inside look at one of the most important human rights developments of recent times. It is also an invaluable book for anyone wanting to learn how to navigate the tricky processes of global problem-solving and consensus-building and how to tackle big issues with ambition, pragmatism, perseverance, and creativity.

Dennis C. Mueller, ed.
F.M. Scherer, contributing author

The financial crisis that began in 2008 and its lingering aftermath have caused many intellectuals and politicians to question the virtues of capitalist systems. The 19 original essays in this Handbook, written by leading scholars from Asia, North America, and Europe, analyze both the strengths and weaknesses of capitalist systems. The volume opens with essays on the historical and legal origins of capitalism. These are followed by chapters describing the nature, institutions, and advantages of capitalism: entrepreneurship, innovation, property rights, contracts, capital markets, and the modern corporation. The next set of chapters discusses the problems that can arise in capitalist systems including monopoly, principal agent problems, financial bubbles, excessive managerial compensation, and empire building through wealth-destroying mergers. Two subsequent essays examine in detail the properties of the "Asian model" of capitalism as exemplified by Japan and South Korea, and capitalist systems where ownership and control are largely separated as in the United States and United Kingdom.

edited by Robert N. Stavins

Over four editions, Economics of the Environment has established itself as the standard student reader for environmental economics courses. A rich complement to other texts, this accessible reader provides a balanced selection of classic and contemporary readings to firmly ground students' understanding in the field's primary literature. The Fifth Edition has been carefully reorganized; over a third of the selections are new.

Joseph L. Bower, Herman Leonard, Lynn Sharp Paine

The spread of capitalism worldwide has made people wealthier than ever before. But capitalism's future is far from assured. The global financial meltdown of 2008 nearly produced a great depression. Economies in Europe are still teetering. Income inequality, resource depletion, mass migrations from poor to rich countries, religious fundamentalism--these are just a few of the threats to continuing prosperity. How can capitalism be sustained? And who should spearhead the effort? Critics turn to government. In Capitalism at Risk, Harvard Business School professors Joseph Bower, Herman Leonard, and Lynn Paine argue that while governments must play a role, businesses should take the lead. For enterprising companies--whether large multinationals, established regional players, or small start-ups--the current threats to market capitalism present important opportunities. Capitalism at Risk draws on discussions with business leaders around the world to identify ten potential disruptors of the global market system. Presenting examples of companies already making a difference, the authors explain how business must serve both as innovator and activist--developing corporate strategies that effect change at the community, national, and international levels. Filled with rich insights, Capitalism at Risk presents a compelling and constructive vision for the future of market capitalism.

Homi Kharas, Koji Makino, Woojin Jung, eds.
Jane Nelson, contributing author

Some may dispute the effectiveness of aid. But few would disagree that aid delivered to the right source and in the right way can help poor and fragile countries develop. It can be a catalyst, but not a driver of development. Aid now operates in an arena with new players, such as middle-income countries, private philanthropists, and the business community; new challenges presented by fragile states, capacity development, and climate change; and new approaches, including transparency, scaling up, and South-South cooperation. The next High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness must determine how to organize and deliver aid better in this environment. Catalyzing Development proposes ten actionable game-changers to meet these challenges based on in-depth, scholarly research. It advocates for these to be included in a Busan Global Development Compact in order to guide the work of development partners in a flexible and differentiated manner in the years ahead.

John G. Ruggie

Japanese translation with new Foreword and Conclusion. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten 2009.

Now that anticommunist alliance-building no longer sustains American engagement in support of a stable world order, what goal can act as the guiding principle of this nation's foreign policy? In Winning the Peace, John Gerard Ruggie answers that question with a compelling vision of American foreign policy into the next century. Ruggie cautions that a combination of case-by-case accounting of American interests abroad, an all-or-nothing military doctrine, and the domestic insecurity bred by the forces of globalization are likely to tilt U.S. foreign policy back to neoisolationism. Instead, Ruggie calls for the promotion of cooperative security relations, economic multilateralism, and a new domestic social contract.

Linda J. Bilmes & W. Scott Gould

Successful businesses have spent the past two decades retooling and rethinking how to manage their people better. Most big companies that have survived and prospered in the 21st century view employees as a vital strategic asset. In comparison, the U.S. federal government is a Stone Age relic, with its top-down bureaucracy, stovepiping of labor and responsibilities, and lack of training and investment in its own public servants. The inevitable result is a government not keeping up with the complex demands placed on it. In The People Factor, Linda Bilmes and Scott Gould present a blueprint for reinvigorating the public sector in order to deliver results for America. Their premise is that the federal government can achieve the same gains as the best private sector and military organizations by managing its people better. Their new vision for public service is based on The People Factor, a set of management tools drawn from best practices in successful companies, the military, and high-performing government agencies. Part One of The People Factor book shows why the U.S. personnel system needs reform, revealing the high price of inaction. Part Two lays out the specific steps that must be taken to achieve the necessary gains. Part Three focuses on how to implement the People Factor and make the authors vision a reality. They argue that the next president needs to turn this issue into a top priority and use political capital to push reform. ()

Clayton Christensen, Jerome Grossman & Jason Hwang

Groundbreaking prescription for health care reform—from a legendary leader in innovation . . . Our health care system is in critical condition. Each year, fewer Americans can afford it, fewer businesses can provide it, and fewer government programs can promise it for future generations. We need a cure, and we need it now. Harvard Business School’s Clayton M. Christensen—whose bestselling The Innovator’s Dilemma revolutionized the business world—presents The Innovator’s Prescription, a comprehensive analysis of the strategies that will improve health care and make it affordable. Christensen applies the principles of disruptive innovation to the broken health care system with two pioneers in the field—Dr. Jerome Grossman and Dr. Jason Hwang. Together, they examine a range of symptoms and offer proven solutions. This is real innovation at work: an eye-opening manifesto that’s sure to spark international debate—and much-needed change for a healthier future.

John G. Ruggie

John Ruggie introduced the concept of embedded liberalism in a 1982 article that has become one of the most frequently cited sources in the study of international political economy. The concept was intended to convey the manner by which capitalist countries learned to combine the efficiency of markets with the broader values of the community that socially sustainable markets themselves require in order to survive and thrive.

Examining the concept and the institutionalized practice of embedded liberalism, this collection provides a survey of the macro patterns in industrialized countries. Leading scholars combine to demonstrate the benefits of embedded liberalism in practice as well as its gradual erosion at national levels, and to analyze public opinion. They provide a better understanding of what embedded liberalism means, why it matters and how to reconstitute it in the context of the global economy. The contributors contextualize the current challenge historically and theoretically so that students, scholars and policy makers alike are reminded of what is at stake and what is required. (Editorial Review)

Richard Zeckhauser and Jonathan K. Nelson

In The Patron's Payoff, Jonathan Nelson and Richard Zeckhauser apply the innovative methods of information economics to the study of art. Their findings, written in highly accessible prose, are surprising and important. Building on three economic concepts--signaling, signposting, and stretching--the book develops the first systematic methodology for assessing the meaning of art patronage and provides a broad and useful framework for understanding how works of art functioned in Renaissance Italy.

The authors discuss how patrons used conspicuous commissions to establish and signal their wealth and status, and the book explores the impact that individual works had on society. The ways in which artists met their patrons' needs for self-promotion dramatically affected the nature and appearance of paintings, sculptures, and buildings. The Patron's Payoff presents a new conceptual structure that allows readers to explore the relationships among the main players in the commissioning game--patrons, artists, and audiences--and to understand how commissioned art transmits information. This book facilitates comparisons of art from different periods and shows the interplay of artists and patrons working to produce mutual benefits subject to an array of limiting factors. The authors engage several art historians to look at what economic models reveal about the material culture of Italy, ca. 1300­1600, and beyond. Their case studies address such topics as private chapels and their decorations, donor portraits, and private palaces. In addition to the authors, the contributors are Molly Bourne, Kelley Helmstutler Di Dio, Thomas J. Loughman, and Larry Silver.

Lael Brainard and Derek Chollet, eds.

Jane Nelson writes on "Effecting Change Through Accountable Channels," Simon Zadek writes on "Collaborative Governance: The New Multilateralism for the Twenty-First Century" and Mark Kramer writes on "Philanthropy, Aid and Investment: Alignment for Impact," in the Brookings Institute's Global Development 2.0. The fight against global poverty has quickly become one of the hottest tickets on the global agenda—with rock stars, world leaders, and multibillionaires calling attention to the plight of the poor at international confabs such as the World Economic Forum and the Clinton Global Initiative. The cozy, all-of-a-kind club of rich country officials who for decades dominated the development agenda has given way to a profusion of mega-philanthropists, "celanthropists," and super-charged advocacy networks vying to solve the world’s toughest problems. Supporting the development glitterati is a sizable rank and file made up of the mass public—as evidenced by the abundance of "Make Poverty History" wristbands, an Internet-enabled spike in charitable giving at all income levels, and record involvement in overseas volunteering.

While philanthropic foundations and celebrity goodwill ambassadors have been part of the charitable landscape for many years, the unprecedented explosion of development players heralds a new era of global action on poverty. Global Development 2.0 celebrates this transformative trend within international aid and offers lessons to ensure that this wave of generosity yields lasting and widespread improvements to the lives and prospects of the world’s poorest.

Contributors include Matthew Bishop (Economist), Joshua Busby (University of Texas–Austin), J. Gregory Dees (Duke University), Vinca LaFleur (Vinca LaFleur Communications), Homi Kharas (Brookings Institution), Ashok Khosla (Development Alternatives Group), Mark Kramer (FSG Social Impact Advisors), Jane Nelson (Harvard University), Joseph O’Keefe (Brookings Institution), Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (Brookings Institution), Darrell M.West (Brown University), and Simon Zadek (AccountAbility).

John Donahue

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.

Linda Bilmes & Joseph Stiglitz

Apart from its tragic human toll, the Iraq War will be staggeringly expensive in financial terms. This sobering study by Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda J. Bilmes casts a spotlight on expense items that have been hidden from the U.S. taxpayer, including not only big-ticket items like replacing military equipment (being used up at six times the peacetime rate) but also the cost of caring for thousands of wounded veterans—for the rest of their lives. Shifting to a global focus, the authors investigate the cost in lives and economic damage within Iraq and the region. Finally, with the chilling precision of an actuary, the authors measure what the U.S. taxpayer's money would have produced if instead it had been invested in the further growth of the U.S. economy. Written in language as simple as the details are disturbing, this book will forever change the way we think about the war.

Tony Saich

The key challenges facing China in the next two decades derive from the ongoing process of urbanization. China's urbanization rate in 2005 was about 43%. Over the next 10-15 years, it is expected to rise to well over 50%, adding an additional 200 million mainly rural migrants to the current urban population of 560 million. How China copes with such a large migration flow will strongly influence rural-urban inequality, the pace at which urban centers expand their economic performance, and the urban environment. The growing population will necessitate a big push strategy to maintain a high rate of investment in housing and the urban physical infrastructure and urban services. To finance such expansion will require a significant strengthening and diversification of China's financial system. Growing cities will greatly increase consumption of energy and water. Containing this without at the same time constraining the economic performance of cities or the improvement in the standards of living will call for enlightened policies, strategies, careful urban planning, and significant technological advances. This volume identifies the key developments to watch and discusses the policies which would affect the course as well as the fruitfulness of change.

Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger & David Lazer, eds.

Developments in information and communication technology and networked computing over the past two decades have given rise to the notion of electronic government, most commonly used to refer to the delivery of public services over the Internet. This volume argues for a shift from the narrow focus of "electronic government" on technology and transactions to the broader perspective of information government--the information flows within the public sector, between the public sector and citizens, and among citizens--as a way to understand the changing nature of governing and governance in an information society. Contributors discuss the interplay between recent technological developments and evolving information flows, and the implications of different information flows for efficiency, political mobilization, and democratic accountability. The chapters are accompanied by short case studies from around the world, which cover such topics as electronic government efforts in Singapore and Switzerland, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's effort to solicit input on planned regulations over the Internet, and online activism "cyberprotesting" globalization. MIT Press.

Julian Chang & Steven M. Goldstein, eds.

This book provides a discussion of the general impact of WTO membership on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and addresses the political and economic impact on cross-Strait relations of common membership. The book begins with an introduction which analyzes the state of cross-Strait economic and political relations on the eve of dual accession to the WTO and briefly introduces the chapters which follow. The first chapter discusses the concessions made by both sides in their accession agreements and is followed by two chapters which describe the manner in which the Taiwan economy was reformed to achieve compliance as well as the specific, restrictive trade regime that was put into place to manage mainland trade. The next two chapters deal with the implications of that restrictive trade regime for the Taiwan economy in Asia and with the nature of the interactions between the two sides within the WTO. The final four chapters of the volume examine the impact of membership on four sectors of the economy: finance; agriculture; electronics and automobiles. There is a post-script which briefly covers developments since the chapters were completed.

Archon Fung

"Which SUVs are most likely to rollover? What cities have the unhealthiest drinking water? Which factories are the most dangerous polluters? What cereals are the most nutritious? In recent decades, governments have sought to provide answers to such critical questions through public disclosure to force manufacturers, water authorities, and others to improve their products and practices. Corporate financial disclosure, nutritional labels, and school report cards are examples of such targeted transparency policies. At best, they create a light-handed approach to governance that improves markets, enriches public discourse, and empowers citizens. But such policies are frequently ineffective or counterproductive. Based on an analysis of eighteen U.S. and international policies, Full Disclosure shows that information is often incomplete, incomprehensible, or irrelevant to consumers, investors, workers, and community residents. To be successful, transparency policies must be accurate, keep ahead of disclosers' efforts to find loopholes, and, above all, focus on the needs of ordinary citizens. " - Cambridge University Press

AIDS & Social Policy in China

Joan Kaufman, Arthur Kleinman & Tony Saich, eds.

Cary Coglianese and Jennifer Nash, ed.

Leveraging the Private Sector offers the first sustained analysis of public and private sector initiatives designed to encourage firms and industries to use their own management expertise to improve their environmental performance. Cary Coglianese and Jennifer Nash bring together original empirical studies by the nation’s leading experts on recent public and private sector experiments. Do management-based strategies lead to improved environmental outcomes? What kinds of strategies hold the most promise? Leveraging the Private Sector addresses these questions through studies of state pollution prevention planning laws, private sector purchasing requirements, and federal risk management regulations, among others. The contributors show that efforts to leverage private sector experience and knowledge can have a distinctive contribution in the future of environmental protection. Ultimately, a firm's broader management practices shape its environmental performance. Public and private sector strategies that seek to influence these practices directly can help bring about further environmental improvements. This book breaks new ground by investigating a new and promising approach for advancing the economy and the environment.

F.M. Scherer

Patents summarizes four decades of pioneering research by F.M. Scherer on the economics of patent protection. This book is distinguished by concern for the role of patents in a global context and by thorough investigation into the utility of patent counts as instruments for measuring the magnitude and consequences of technological invention. The book also includes a detailed new introduction by F.M. Scherer.

Ashley Brown, Jon Stern & Bernard Tenenbaum

This book provides an analytical framework and supporting instruments for evaluating the performance of new infrastructure regulators in developing countries. It argues that an evaluation must examine both regulatory governance (the "how" of regulation) as well as regulatory substance (the "what" of regulation). If the evaluation is to produce useful "second generation" reforms, it must examine how formal elements of the regulatory system have been implemented in practice and the effect of these elements on sector performance. It describes how to "operationalize" the independent regulator model and elements of possible transitional regulatory systems. Examples are generally drawn from electricity regulation but the analytical framework, questionnaires and interview protocols can be easily adapted to other infrastructure sectors.

Datenschutzgesetz

Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger

In 1995 the members of the European Union agreed on a common legal framework for the protection of personal data. This framework has been implemented in the member states, and significantly changed the way personal data is acquired, processed and transferred by the public and the private sector. In addition, the European Court of Justice has recently published its first major ruling on the European data privacy framework, widening its reach. "Datenschutzgesetz" is a treatise and collection of the resulting Data Protection Law, as well as related regulations, and also includes the "Safe Harbor" framework between the US and the European Union on data privacy issues.

Robert Stavins

Everyone agrees that firms should obey the law. But beyond the law -- beyond compliance with regulations -- do firms have additional social responsibilities to commit resources voluntarily to environmental protection? How should we think about firms sacrificing profits in the social interest? May they do so within the scope of their fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders? Is the practice sustainable, or will the competitive marketplace render such efforts and their impacts transient at best? Furthermore, is the practice, however well intended, an efficient use of social and economic resources? And do some firms already behave this way? Until now, public discussion has generated more heat than light on both the normative and positive questions surrounding corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the environmental realm. In Environmental Protection and the Social Responsibility of Firms, some of the nation's leading scholars in law, economics, and business examine commonly accepted assumptions at the heart of current debates on CSR and provide a foundation for future research and policymaking.

The Technology of Justice

David Lazer

Is DNA technology the ultimate diviner of guilt or the ultimate threat to civil liberties? Over the past decade, DNA has been used to exonerate hundreds and to convict thousands. Its expanded use over the coming decade promises to recalibrate significantly the balance between collective security and individual freedom. For example, it is possible that law enforcement DNA databases will expand to include millions of individuals not convicted of any crime. Moreover, depending on what rules govern access, such databases could also be used for purposes that range from determining paternity to assessing predispositions to certain diseases or behaviors. Thus the use of DNA technology will involve tough trade-offs between individual and societal interests. This book, written by a distinguished group of authors including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, explores the ethical, procedural, and economic challenges posed by the use of DNA evidence as well as future directions for the technology. After laying the conceptual historical, legal, and scientific groundwork for the debate, the book considers bioethical issues raised by the collection of DNA, including the question of control over DNA databases. The authors then turn to the possible genetic bases of human behavior and the implications of this still-unresolved issue for the criminal justice system. Finally, the book examines the current debate over the many roles that DNA can and should play in criminal justice.

Catharine B. Hill, Malcolm F. McPherson

This collection of essays examines Zambia's efforts to promote economic reform during the 1990s. Following the restoration of democratic rule, the Government of Zambia adopted an ambitious program designed to stabilize the economy and lay the foundation for sustained growth and development. These essays describe the adjustment program, highlighting the attempts to reform the budget, the tax system, the financial system, agriculture and mining, and to create the human capacity to sustain the reforms. Major improvements in economic performance occurred from 1992 to 1995. After that, however, economic performance deteriorated as a result of the Government's selective abandonment of key elements of the reform program and the emergence of major governance problems. In response to international pressure, by 2001 the Government completed the sale of the copper mines and qualified for large-scale debt relief. The long delays involved seriously undermined economic performance. The volume concludes that for economic reform to succeed in Zambia, the Government should scale back its development agenda to match its financial and human capacities, reduce dependence on foreign aid, adopt and maintain prudent macroeconomic policies, and support the expansion of both mining and agriculture.

Profits With Principles

Ira Jackson and Jane Nelson

Companies today are under intense pressure to rebuild public trust and to be competitive in a global economy. To do this they must act responsibly, transparently and with integrity, while remaining profitable and innovative. They must engage with activists as well as analysts, cooperate as well as compete, manage social and environmental risks as well as market risks, and leverage their intangible assets as well as their financial and physical assets. The authors present seven business disciplines that incorporate values-based management into corporate strategy and core operations: 1) Harness Innovation for Public Good, 2) Put People at the Center, 3) Spread Economic Opportunity, 4) Engage in New Alliances, 5) Be Performance-driven in Everything, 6) Practice Superior Governance, 7) Pursue Purpose Beyond Profit. More than a book about achieving value with values, Profits with Principles is a roadmap to restoring public trust and investor confidence in the corporate world.

Mary Ruggie

Millions of Americans are using complementary and alternative medicine and spending billions of dollars, out of pocket, for it. Why? Do the therapies work? Are they safe? Are any covered by insurance? How is the medical profession responding to the growing use of therapies that were only recently thought of as quackery? These are some of the many questions asked and answered in this book. It describes a transformation in the status of alternative medicine within health care. Paving the way toward legitimacy is research currently underway and funded by the National Institutes of Health. This research is proving the safety and efficacy of certain therapies and the harm or inefficacy of others. Although some therapies will remain alternative to medicine, others are becoming complementary, and still others are busting the boundaries and contributing to a new approach to health and healing called integrative medicine.

Richard Zeckhauser

This book - based on the careful examination of more than 500,000 college applications to fourteen elite colleges, and hundreds of interviews with students, counselors, and admissions officers - provides an extraordinarily thorough analysis of early admissions. In clear language it details the advantages and pitfalls of applying early as it provides a map for students and parents to navigate the process. Unlike college admissions guides, The Early Admissions Game reveals the realities of early applications, how they work and what effects they have. The authors frankly assess early applications. Applying early is not for everyone, but it will improve - sometimes double, even triple - the chances of being admitted to a prestigious college.

Pepper Culpepper

How can states convince private actors to cooperate with one another? As governments across the industrialized world are discovering, this is the basic challenge posed by many current reforms of economic, social, and environmental policy. The paradigmatic case of such a policy is the development of private investment in human capital. Creating Cooperation is an inquiry into why governments in France and Germany succeeded or failed during the 1990s in implementing such policies, whose success depended on the capacity of governments to elicit large increases in private sector investment in workplace training.

Lewis Branscomb

In this book, Lewis Branscomb and Philip Auerswald address early-stage, high-tech innovation in the context of business decision making an innovation policy. The topics addressed include the extent to which purely technical risk is separable from market risk; how industrial managers make decisions on funding early-stage, high-risk technology projects; and under what circumstances government can and should act to reduce the technical risks of innovative projects so that firms will invest in them.

Regulating from the Inside

Cary Coglianese and Jennifer Nash

Environmental Management Systems (EMSs) offer an approach to regulatory policy that lies somewhere between free-market and traditional command-and-control methods. Worldwide, hundreds of thousands of firms have adopted these internally managed systems for improving environmental performance. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency established a special recognition for firms that adopt EMSs. Yet, while both private and public-sector interest have been booming, the enthusiasm of proponents contrasts sharply with the limited empirical evidence that is available about the efficacy of EMSs. To close the gap between advocacy and analysis, Regulating from the Inside, brings together cutting-edge work of leading scholars, providing the most comprehensive analysis to date of environmental management systems. Addressing the arguments of both advocates and skeptics, the chapters examine why firms adopt EMSs; how firms implement EMSs; how EMSs answer concerns about fairness, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability; and what kind of impact EMSs may have on the global economy.

Hazardous Crosscurrents: Continuing Inequality in an Era of Devolution

John Donahue

Hazardous Crosscurrents: Confronting Inequality in an Era of Devolution is one in the Devolution Revolution series of the Century Foundation Reports that analyzes the impact of the widespread shift of government responsibilities from the national to the state and local level. In this volume, John D. Donahue explores possible connections between the trends toward greater economic inequality and more state-centered government. Without claiming that devolution of authority from the federal level to the states is responsible for widening the gaps between the rich and poor, Donahue does argue that it has made it more difficult to offset the economic forces that have produced greater inequality. He explores particular realms of public policy taxation, antipoverty programs, education, and job training to demonstrate the relatively limited capacity of states collectively to keep low-income families from falling further behind. As a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Labor Department during his first term of the Clinton administration, Donahue saw firsthand how limited the federal government's powers had become.

John D. Donahue and Joseph Nye

In this latest volume from KSG’s Visions of Governance in the 20th Century Project, John D. Donahue and Joseph S. Nye, Jr. help to inform a critical debate in the emerging field of collaborative governance: How can the public sector best harness the efficiencies of the market to improve government accountability? The use of market means to pursue public goals, whether by shifting traditional government responsibilities to the private sector or by incorporating market-inspired approaches to the solution of public problems, has emerged in earnest over the last quarter century. Market-Based Governance elucidates this dynamic, defining instances where the public sector is both a customer of the private sector and a provider of traditional market services. Chapter contributors – including CBG’s Cary Coglianese, Archon Fung, Elaine Kamarck, David Lazer, Robert Stavins and Richard Zeckhauser – explore different manifestations of the entangled relationship between the market and the state and evaluate both the “downside” and the “upside” of using private sector-based means to improve governance in the 21st century.

Dennis Encarnation

In Rivals beyond Trade, Dennis J. Encarnation examines the evolution of foreign investment and related trade by American and Japanese multinationals in light of economic and political conditions that have prevailed since before World War II. For increasing access to world markets, government policies have become much less important than corporate strategies, he argues. Japan's economic prowess, Encarnation maintains, does not arise because of America's declining competitiveness. Neither can foreign exchange rates or Japanese trade policies alone be blamed. He traces Japan's success to crucial differences in strategic investment policies, which have allowed the Japanese first to trade and later to invest in the United States with a freedom unavailable to Americans in Japan.

Dennis Encarnation

Japanese Multinationals in Asia: Regional Operations in Comparative Perspective collects the work of a multinational group of scholars interested in the spread of Japanese multinational corporations across Asia. During the 1980s, a flock of Japanese corporations set up operations in neighboring Asian nations, pushed in part by the sharply rising value of the Japanese yen, and pulled by the alluring prospect of lower labor costs. A decade later, multinational corporations based in Japan remain the largest source of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Asia and a principal source of technology transfer and have fundamentally reorganized production across Asia. Editor Dennis Encarnation has collected ten chapters paired in sections that cover FDI, related merchandise trade, the specific case of technology transfer, the cross-border formation of production networks, and the relative effects of such operations on home and host economies. Each chapter addresses several interrelated questions: How do Japanese multinationals actually operate in Asia? How do they compare to the regional operations of multinationals based in the United States and elsewhere? What is the economic impact of these operations in Japan and in host economies across Asia? And what are the implications of the findings reported here for prevailing theory, public policy, and corporate strategy?

Jeffrey Frankel

The rapid growth of regional trading relationships in Europe, Asia, and Latin America has raised policy concerns about their impact on excluded countries and on the global trading system. Some observers worry that the multilateral system may be fracturing into discriminatory regional blocs. Others are hopeful that regional agreements will go beyond what was achieved in the Uruguay Round and instead become building blocks for further global liberalization and WTO rules in new areas.
Having recently moved to the Council of Economic Advisers, Jeffrey Frankel shows extensive empirical analysis that the new breed of preferential trade arrangements are indeed concentrating trade regionally. He then assesses whether regional blocs are "natural" or "supernatural"—that is, whether they enhance or reduce global welfare. He concludes that a move to complete liberalization within blocs, with no reduction in barriers between blocs, would push the trading system into the supernatural zone of an excessive degree of regionalization.

Dale Jorgenson

In this book Jorgenson shows that information technology (IT) provides the foundation for the resurgence of American economic growth. He shows how the relentless decline in the prices of information technology equipment and software has steadily enhanced the role of IT investment as a source of economic growth in the United States. Productivity in IT-producing industries has risen in importance and a productivity revival has taken place in the rest of the economy. Information technology rests in turn on the development and deployment of semiconductors - storage devices and microprocessors. The semiconductor and IT industries are global in scope with an international division of labor. To address the question, where is the evidence of the "new economy" in other leading industrialized nations, Jorgenson compares recent growth performance in the G7 countries - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Dale Jorgenson and Charles Wessner

Drawn from a symposium held in October 2000 by the National Academy of Science's Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP), Measuring and Sustaining the New Economy (National Academy Press, 2002) highlights the changes in the U.S. economy that were precipitated, in part, by national investments in computing, information, and communication technologies. According to Prof. Dale Jorgenson and Charles Wessner, co-editors of the book, these new technologies are sparking significant growth in productivity and have ushered in a new economic phase in the United States: the New Economy of the Information Age. Targeted public policy - from regulation and intellectual property protection to cost-shared partnerships and public procurement - can help sustain this New Economy in many important ways. While related data are still occasionally sparse, the editors conclude that the correlation between technological advances and productivity is clear enough to already have had, and continue to have, a significant impact on the policy-making process in the United States.

Dale Jorgenson

Dale Jorgenson's Productivity (Vol. 2) is one of 10 books in a series that includes titles such as Welfare, Growth, Productivity (Vol. 1), investment, and Econometrics. The two volumes of Productivity present empirical studies that have permanently altered professional debates over investment and productivity as sources of postwar economic growth in industrialized countries. The distinctive feature of investment is that returns can be internalized by the investor. This idea applies most to investments that create property rights, but these volumes broaden the meaning of capital formation to include investments in education and training. Productivity Volume 1, Postwar U.S. Economic Growth, traces the outstanding postwar performance of the U.S. economy to investments in tangible assets and human capital. It provides the starting point for a new consensus based on policies to generate growth by stimulating and rewarding investments in tangible assets and human capital. These policies will focus on returns that can be internalized by investors, ending the fruitless search for "spillovers" that can generate substantial growth without providing incentives for capital formation. Volume 2, International Comparisons of Economic Growth, focuses on comparisons of economic growth among industrialized countries. Although Japan and Germany are often portrayed as economic adversaries of the United States, postwar experiences in all three countries support policies that give high priority to stimulating and rewarding capital formation. In the Asian model of growth, exemplified by Japan, investments in tangible assets and human capital are especially critical during periods of rapid growth.

Governance.com: Democracy in the Information Age

Elaine Ciulla Kamarck and Joseph Nye, Jr.

Governance.com is the fifth volume published by the Kennedy School’s Visions of Governance for the 21st Century Project, which tackles the question of how to ensure good, effective, and legitimate governance in an era of large public dissatisfaction and disaffection with government. We are in an age of increasing globalization, marketization, and information technology, all of which have the potential to cause a dramatic effect on the future of governance. In Governance.com, Kamarck and Nye pull together essays from diverse perspectives on the impact or non-impact of information technology on the basic institutions and processes of governance, from representation to bureaucracy to community politics. Rather than offering definitive conclusions on the ever-evolving intersection of information technology and governance, Governance.com is meant to provoke further thought and research in this area by illuminating many of the challenges and opportunities the Information Age has posed for democratic governance.

A Prism on Globalization

Robert Lawrence

In this book, Robert Z. Lawrence and Subramanian Rangan examine the international pricing, sourcing, and trade responses of multi-national enterprises to shifts in the dollar. In the process, they refute stereotypes which portray multinational firms as either footloose or inflexible and conclude that the global integration of markets remains incomplete due to informational and other important discontinuities. Policy implications for exchange rates, and foreign direct investment are also discussed.

Richard Light

Taken from 10 years worth of interviews with Harvard seniors, Richard Light distills encouraging - and surprisingly practical - answers to fundamental questions. How can you choose classes wisely? What's the best way to study? Why do some professors inspire and others leave you cold? How can you connect what you discover in class to all you're learning in the rest of your life? Light suggests, for instance, that: studying in pairs or groups can be more productive than studying alone; the first and most important skill to learn is time management; supervised independent research projects and working internships offer the most learning and the greatest challenges; and encounters with students of different religions can be simultaneously the most taxing and most illuminating of all the experiences with a diverse student body. Filled with practical advice, illuminated with stories of real students' self doubts, failures, discoveries, and hopes, Making the Most of College is a handbook for academic and personal success.

Information und Recht

Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger

The industrial society is transformed into the information society. Who has control over information (and thus its economic value) will become one of the central issues of the coming years. This book presents a comprehensive solution without requiring a new "information law" to create the necessary clarity of rights over information - and hence legal certainty in the information society.

Human Rights: Positive Policies in Asia and the Pacific Rim

John Montgomery, Editor

Human Rights: Positive Policies in Asia and the Pacific Rim is an important contribution to the ongoing debate on how to promote and secure human rights. In several settings in Asia and Latin America it explores the utility of positive incentives and rewards (rather than shaming and punishment) to induce governments to implement policies, economic and social as well as political and legal, that enhance the dignity, opportunity, and well-being of their citizens. It demonstrates how progress toward human rights in every society is a gradual and uneven process in which internal politics combine with external pressures to determine the outcome.

John D. Montgomery and Nathan Glazer

Sovereignty under Challenge: How Governments Respond (Transaction Publishers, 2002) is the fifth in the Soka University of America's Pacific Basin Research Center (PBRC) policy study series. Edited by Nathan Glazer and CBG's John D. Montgomery, Ford Foundation Professor Emeritus and Director of PBRC, Sovereignty compiles different perspectives on the changing future of the power of the state. In a departure from the traditional notion of the absolute will of the state in the face of foreign infringement, Montgomery and Glazer argue that contemporary objectives of sovereignty are much subtler. The essays in Sovereignty revolve around the new challenges to states, from both above and below. From above, states are now contending with international institutions and human rights, trade, and investment treaties; from below, there is a rising challenge from discontented and emerging groups within a state. Through analysis of these challenges, many the results of neo-liberalism and globalization, as well as states' responses in Southeast Asia, China, India and elsewhere, the book concludes that sovereignty has remained resilient and robust due to its flexibility. Sovereignty still stands as the guiding institutional framework for the governance of human affairs.

Efficiency, Equity, Legitimacy

Roger Porter, Pierre Sauvé, Arvind Subramanian and Americo Beviglia Zampetti, eds.

The multilateral trading system stands at a crossroads. Despite its widely acknowledged contribution to global prosperity over the past half century, the movement toward further liberalization has in recent years confronted heightened and vocal resistance from a wide and disparate set of constituencies. And the political legitimacy of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is openly questioned in a globalizing environment. What are the costs and benefits of further multilateral trade and investment liberalization? How are such costs and benefits distributed between and among countries and categories of workers? Does multilateral rule making pose a threat to the regulatory sovereignty of nations, creating pressures for convergence of institutions and social norms? Should the WTO reform its governance structure to meet the new demands placed on it by the international community? These and other questions are addressed in this collection of essays centered on the three central challenges facing the multilateral trading system today: efficiency, equity, and legitimacy. This volume, edited by Roger Porter, Pierre Sauve, Arvind Subramanian, and Americo Beviglia Zampetti, emerged from a conference held by the Center for Business and Government in June 2000. It includes essays from a wide variety of economists and political scientists in honor of Raymond Vernon, a key contributor to the postwar international economic architecture and a leading scholar of the global trading system.

Seattle, the WTO and the Future of the Multilateral Trading System

Roger Porter and Pierre Sauvé, eds.

To honor the memory of Professor Raymond Vernon, the Center for Business and Government hosted a seminar series during the 1999-2000 academic year devoted to a topic central to Professor Vernon's scholarship: the evolution of the rules-based trading system. The seminar series used as a focal point the third Ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which the US government hosted in Seattle in December 1999. This volume provides a snapshot of the Seattle meeting and its immediate aftermath. The essays by Robert Z. Lawrence, Representative James Kolbe, Guy de Jonquières, Joseph E. Stiglitz and John H. Jackson usefully recall how a number of fault lines have in recent years significantly complicated attempts at building consensus, both domestically and internationally, on trade-related matters. The volume's second edition brings together essays presented after the meeting, affording authors the rare luxury of 20-20 policy hindsight. The contributions of Sylvia Ostry, Michael Hart, Richard W. Fisher and Jonathan T. Fried offer a first preliminary assessment of wider consequences of the WTO meeting for the future of the multilateral trading system and for the tone, substance and likely direction of the ongoing debate over globalization. The Center's aim in bringing together the diverse views contained in these essays is to offer readers some contextual background with which to launch a forward looking discussion of the challenges of governance and rule-making in today's global environment.

Constructing the World Polity

John Ruggie

This volume of essays brings together John Ruggie's most influential theories and applies them to critical policy questions concerning the post-Cold War international order. The book is divided into three parts. Part One: International Organization examines the "new institutionalism" differs from the old and introduces the concepts of regimes, epistemic communities, and multilateralism. Part Two: The System of States explores political structure, social time, and territorial space in the world polity. Part Three: The Question of Agency looks at America in the post-cold war era; NATO and the future transatlantic security community; and the United Nations and the collective use of force.

Governance and Politics of China

Tony Saich

In Governance and Politics of China, CBG Professor Anthony Saich provides analysis of recent economic and political reform measures in China and postulates on the key policy problems China faces as an emerging member of the world community. How did China change from an isolated nation to one of the foremost economies in the world? Since the Revolution of 1949, China’s reforms have been remarkable. Despite maintaining its authoritarian political structure, China has managed to liberalize its economy, welcoming foreign investment and the growth of private business. As the country faces accession to the WTO and other key challenges of the twenty-first century, it becomes increasingly crucial to understand how decisions the Chinese government makes will impact the Asia region and the world. From the economy and trade to social policy, security and the environment, Governance provides a thorough introduction to these changes and to all aspects of politics and governance in post-Mao China.

Tony Saich

The publication of this book is a major event in the study of the Chinese revolution. Of enormous significance to scholars of China's modern history, it presents, with careful and painstakingly detailed annotation and commentary, more than two hundred key documents covering the rise to power of the Chinese Communist Party from its inception in 1920, the resultant epic Long March to Yan'an, the war with Japan, and the bitter and bloody Civil War that brought Mao Zedong and the Communists to power in the late 1940's. These documents, which show how the CCP interpreted the revolution in which it played the key role, how it devised policies to meet changing circumstances, and how these were communicated to both party members and the public at large, permit a comprehensive reappraisal of the rise to power of the Chinese Communist movement for the first time in 40 years. Saich's book provides a complex picture of the party's policies and its relationship to different social forces in the countryside and the cities, shed new light on the development of the CCP as an organization and its internal diversity, and demonstrate how Mao came to dominate the party by skillfully outmaneuvering his opponents.

F.M. Scherer

This volume collects 26 of F.M. Scherer's most important papers, both previously published and unpublished, on a broad array of competition policy issues. The papers address the historical antecedents and rationale of competition policy, the logic of market definition and the implications of pricing strategies pursued by enterprises with monopoly power. The author also examines tradeoffs between competition goals and the attainment of static and dynamic efficiency, implementing effective remedies in merger and monopoly cases and the role of competition policy in an increasingly open world economy.

Malcolm Sparrow

The Regulatory Craft tackles one of the most pressing public policy issues of our time - the reform of regulatory and enforcement practice. Malcolm. K. Sparrow shows how the vogue prescriptions of reform, centered on concepts of customer service and process improvement, fail to take account of the distinctive character of regulatory responsibilities which involve the delivery of obligations rather than just services. In order to construct more balanced prescriptions for reform, Sparrow says we must reconsider the central purpose of social regulation - the abatement or control of risks to society. He recounts the experiences of pioneering agencies that have confronted the risk-control challenge directly. At the heart of a new regulatory craftsmanship, according to Sparrow, lies the ability to "pick important problems and fix them." This simple idea turns out to present enormously complex implementation challenges and carries with it profound consequences for the way regulators organize their work, manage their discretion, and report their performance.

Robert Stavins

The first edition of Public Policies for Environmental Protection contributed significantly to the incorporation of economic analysis in the study of environmental policy. Fully revised to account for changes in the institutional, legal, and regulatory framework of environmental policy, the second edition features updated chapters on EPA and federal regulation, air and water pollution policy, and hazardous and toxic substances. It includes entirely new chapters on market-based environmental policies, global climate change, and solid waste, and, for the first time, it provides coverage of the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Raymond Vernon

The world's multinational enterprises face a spell of rough weather, political economist Ray Vernon argues, not only from the host countries in which they have established their subsidiaries, but also from their home countries. Such enterprises now generate about half of the world's foreign trade; so any change in the relatively benign climate in which they have operated over the past decade will create serious tensions in international economic relations. The tendency of multinationals in different countries to find common cause in open markets, strong patents and trademarks, and international technical standards has been viewed as a loss of national sovereignty and a weakening of the nation-state system, producing hostile reactions in home countries. The challenge for policymakers, Vernon argues, is to bridge the quite different regimes of the multinational enterprise and the nation-state. Both have a major role to play, and yet must make basic changes in their practices and policies to accommodate each other.

The Strains of Economic Growth: Labor Unrest and Social Dissatisfaction in Korea

Ezra Vogel

An analytic history of how the strains of Korea's economic growth contributed to the labor unrest and popular discontent of the late 1980's. Set against rapid increases in wages and employment, worker dissatisfaction is traced to patterns of income inequality and the suppression of labor organizations. Vogel's analysis is essential to understanding the labor struggles that continue in Korea today and is highly relevant for other emerging economies that wish to benefit from Korea's experience.

Ashton Carter & John White

Most national security debate concerns the policy end and too often neglects to examine the means by which we implement our national strategies. While the U.S. military is the finest fighting force in the world, the national security system that supports it is in serious disrepair. Operating with Cold War-era structures and practices, the system is subject to an array of managerial and organizational problems that will increasingly threaten our military's effectiveness. In this book, a bipartisan group of senior experts explores these issues. Edited by John White, this book presents specific recommendations about how the U.S. national security establishment - and especially the Department of Defense - should be changed to improve the U.S. ability to implement its chosen policies, to manage its programs, and to anticipate and adapt to a changing and uncertain world.

American Society

Richard J. Zeckhauser

American Society is a provocative examination of public and private spheres of activity in areas ranging from the arts to economics, education to corporate governance. Its probing essays offer an insightful look at how society should be organized to promote economic efficiency and social well-being. From diverse perspectives, the authors evaluate the appropriate division of responsibilities between the public and the private sectors. Their focus on first principles leads to a fundamental reassessment of traditional roles and relationships.