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| Joseph
Stiglitz and the World Bank: The Rebel Within |
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| Edited
by : Ha-Joon Chang |
Published
by: Anthem Press, London. |
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Click to Enlarge
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Presents the most
important and controversial speeches of a World
Bank intellectual heavyweight and firebrand *
Clear and incisive analysis and discussion by
a leading Cambridge University economist. * Includes
Stiglitz's insights and predictions for the future
of the global economy. * Essential reading for
all economists, students of economics, and business
people.
No one has challenged the policies of the international
financial community as profoundly as has Joseph
Stiglitz, the former chief economist of the World
Bank. With an unimpeachable reputation as a |
scholar, Stiglitz
stunned financial policy makers with a series
of stinging criticisms in recent years that were
all the more effective because they were on target.
In more than two dozen controversial speeches
made around the world, Stiglitz undid the conventional
wisdom that dominated policy-making at the World
Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the
U.S. Treasury Department.
Now, in one volume, Cambridge University professor
Ha-Joon Chang has gathered the most important
of Stiglitz's speeches and provides an invaluable
introduction to Stiglitz's thoughts. This is the
most coherent vision of Stiglitz's thinking to
be found anywhere.
The book, which includes nineof Stiglitz's most
revealing speeches, reflects his central themes.
These include the failure of shock therapy and
transition economics, the limits of capital market
liberalization, the myopia of the Washington consensus,
the role of knowledge in markets, the process
of developing market institutions, and the primacy
of openness and worker participation.
About the Author
Ha-Joon Chang is Assistant Director of Development
Studies at University of Cambridge. He has worked
as a consultant for numerous international organizations,
uncluding various UN agencies (UNCTAD, WIDER,
UNDP, and UNIDO), the World Bank and the Asian
Development Bank. Among his publications are "The
Political Economy of Industrial Policy."
He has also edited a number of volumes including
"Joseph Stiglitz and the World Bank: the
Reble Within," a collection of speeches by
Joseph Stiglitz, and has published numerous articles
on issues ranging from theories of the state,
market and institutions, to the transition economies.
"Perhaps the best-known critic of overreliance
on the market policies to stimulate economic growth
has been Joseph Stiglitz, the former chief economist
of the World Bank, and one of three winners of
this year's Nobel in economic Science. In a series
of speeches at the World Bank, many of which are
collected in a new volume " The Rebel Within",
Mr. Stiglitz argues that a broad range of factors
affect economic growth, including education and
the quality of financial institutions which often
require financing and regulation by government."
-- Economic Scene, New York Times
"A powerful collection of key speeches from
one of the most controversial economists of our
time, each expertly reviewed and presented by
Dr Chang." -- Jeffrey Madrick, Editor, Challenge
Magazine; former Economics Correspondent NBC News.
Contents
Economists and Their Tools - Speech: "Knowledge
for Development. Flaws in the Neoliberal Model
- Speech: "More Instruments and Broader Goals".
When Standard Macroeconomics Does not Always Apply
- Speech: "Shaken and Stirred". Lesson
From the Global Financial Crisis - Speeches: "Lessons
From the GFC" and "Second-Generation
Strategies for China". The Role of International
Institutions in the Current Global Economy. On
Transparency & Openness in Economic Policy-Making
- Speech: "On Liberty, the Right to Know".
Inclusion and Participation in Economic Policy-making
- Speech: "Democratic Development or the
Fruits of Labor". Index
Review by Ronald P.
Dore
Cavanazza, Italy.
Joseph Stiglitz and the World Bank: The Rebel
Within, comprising nine of the 30 speeches Stiglitz
made in the years when he was at the World Bank,
shows that discretion was not just the better
part of valour but a precondition for effective
infighting. Here hardly a word about the villain
of the piece, the IMF; not a single entry in the
index, in fact. The Washington consensus is, to
be sure, taken apart and found wanting in the
book's first essay, but whereas in Globalization
and its Discontents he launches a vigorous attack
on the IMF's initial intentions of punishing Ethiopia
for counting foreign aid as a reliable source
of government revenue, here, without a mention
of the IMF, he offers only the mild suggestion
that Ethiopia shows 'it may make sense'
to do so.
So, fewer fireworks, but much more in compensation,
particularly more systematic evaluation of policy
choices with careful citation of the empirical
evidence that other economists have produced,
and some original comparative analysis of economic
data. And, whatever the issue, a healthy scepticism
about theoretical equilibrium models and an awareness
of the social embeddedness of the institutions
through which economic processes work.
The range of the nine essays is striking, as Chang
remarks in his introduction. There is much, as
in his Globalization and its Discontents, on the
Russian and Eastern European transitions and on
East Asia But the collection of speeches also
has more general reflections on the ingredients
of economic growth in poor countries, on community
development-type participation, on building knowledge
infrastructures and on industrial democracy in
advanced industrial societies. |
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| June 5, 2003. |
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