"Growing Prosperity could well be as important in shaping our future as Keynes' General Theory. . . . A work as meticulous as it is powerful, as promising as it is persuasive."—Robert Heilbroner, author of The Worldly Philosophers "Bluestone and Harrison have alerted us to the key issue confronting America: how to achieve growth with equity. This country needs a powerful dialogue on how to continue growth while deepening its benefits to all Americans. This is the blueprint for the terms of that debate."—U.S. Representative Richard Gephardt

Since its launch in 2006, the Hamilton Project at Brookings has produced extensive research on how to create a growing economy that benefits all Americans. Its pragmatic work aims to increase opportunities for broad-based wealth, economic security, and enduring growth. Path to Prosperity, the first book to emerge from the Hamilton Project, presents important and original work to that end. P ath to Prosperity focuses on three key criteria for fostering broadly shared economic growth: enhancing economic security, building a highly skilled work force, and reforming the tax system. Income security proposals offer methods for reforming unemployment insurance, protecting against the risk of reemployment at a lower wage after job loss, and improving incentives for retirement saving. Education proposals build human capital by improving each level of education, from preschool programs for poor children to graduate fellowships in math and science. The tax proposals seek to make taxation simpler, more progressive, and better suited to a global economy. Contributors include Roger C.Altman, Reuven S.Avi-Yonah, Jason E. Bordoff, Kimberly A. Clausing, Susan M. Dynarski, Molly E. Fifer, Richard B. Freeman, Jason Furman,William G. Gale,Austan Goolsbee, Robert Gordon, Jonathan Gruber,Thomas J. Kane, Lori Kletzer, Jeffrey R. Kling, Alan B. Krueger, Jens Ludwig, Peter R. Orszag, Howard F. Rosen, Robert Rubin, Isabel Sawhill, Judith E. Scott-Clayton, and Douglas O. Staiger.

Breaking new ground in its innovative blend of quantitative and qualitative methods, the book essentially argues that another sort of growth is indeed possible. While offering specific insights for regional leaders and analysts of metropolitan areas, the authors also draw a broader – and quite timely – set of conclusions about how to scale up these efforts to address a U.S. economy still seeking to recover from economic crisis and ameliorate distributional divisions.

Why has an economy that has done so many things right failed to grow fast? Under-Rewarded Efforts traces Mexico’s disappointing growth to flawed microeconomic policies that have suppressed productivity growth and nullified the expected benefits of the country’s reform efforts. Fast growth will not occur doing more of the same or focusing on issues that may be key bottlenecks to productivity growth elsewhere, but not in Mexico. It will only result from inclusive institutions that effectively protect workers against risks, redistribute towards those in need, and simultaneously align entrepreneurs’ and workers’ incentives to raise productivity.

Arguments for protection and against free trade have seen a revival in developed countries such as the United States and Great Britain as well as developing countries such as India. Given the clear benefits trade openness has brought everywhere, this is a surprising development. The benefits of free trade are especially great for emerging market economies. Free Trade and Prosperity offers the first full-scale defense of pro-free-trade policies with developing countries at its center. Arvind Panagariya, a professor at Columbia University and former top economic advisor to the government of India, supplies a historically informed analysis of many longstanding but flawed arguments for protection. He starts with an insightful overview of the positive case for free trade, and then closely examines the various contentions of protectionists. One protectionist argument is that "infant" industries need time to grow and become competitive, and thus should be sheltered. Other arguments are that emerging markets are especially prone to coordination failures, they are in need of diversification of their production structures, and they suffer from market imperfections. The panoply of protectionist arguments, including those for import substitution industrialization, fails when subject to close logical and empirical scrutiny. Free trade and outward-oriented policies are preconditions to both sustained rapid growth and poverty alleviation in developing countries. Panagariya provides compelling evidence demonstrating the failures of protectionism and the promise of free trade using detailed case studies of successful countries such as Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, China and India. Low or declining barriers to free trade and high or rising shares of trade in total income have been key elements in the sustained rapid growth and poverty alleviation in these countries and many others. Free trade is like oxygen: the benefits are ubiquitous and not noticed until they are no longer there. This important book is an essential reminder of the costs of protectionism.

This book documents frontier knowledge on the drivers of agriculture productivity to derive pragmatic policy advice for governments and development partners on reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity. The analysis describes global trends and long-term sources of total factor productivity growth, along with broad trends in partial factor productivity for land and labor, revisiting the question of scale economies in farming. Technology is central to growth in agricultural productivity, yet across many parts of the developing world, readily available technology is never taken up. We investigate demand-side constraints of the technology equation to analyze factors that might influence producers, particularly poor producers, to adopt modern technology. Agriculture and food systems are rapidly transforming, characterized by shifting food preferences, the rise and growing sophistication of value chains, the increasing globalization of agriculture, and the expanding role of the public and private sectors in bringing about efficient and more rapid productivity growth. In light of this transformation, the analysis focuses on the supply side of the technology equation, exploring how the enabling environment and regulations related to trade and intellectual property rights stimulate Research and Development to raise productivity. The book also discusses emerging developments in modern value chains that contribute to rising productivity. This book is the fourth volume of the World Bank Productivity Project, which seeks to bring frontier thinking on the measurement and determinants of productivity to global policy makers.

Publisher Description

Catherine Bowler's Blessed represents the first attempt to examine the twentieth-century American prosperity gospel movement as a whole, seeking to introduce readers to its major figures and features.

Access to new sources of energy and their efficient conversion to provide useful work have been key drivers of economic growth since the industrial revolution. Western countries now need to transform their energy systems and move away from the single-minded pursuit of economic growth in order to reduce our carbon emissions, and to allow the environmental space for other countries to develop in a more sustainable way. Achieving this requires understanding of the dynamics of economic and industrial change with appreciation of the dependence of economies on ecological systems. Energy and Economic Growth thus examines the links between three issues: history of energy sources, technologies and uses; ecological challenges associated with the current dominant economic growth paradigm; and the future low carbon energy transition to mitigate human-induced climate change. Providing a historical understanding of the relevant connections between physical, social and economic changes, the book enables the reader to better understand the connection between their own energy use and global economic and environmental systems, and to be able to ask the right questions of our political and business leaders. This is a valuable resource for students, scholars and policy makers with an interest in energy, climate change and economic thinking.

Manufacturing’s central role in global innovation Companies compete on the decisions they make. For years—even decades—in response to intensifying global competition, companies decided to outsource their manufacturing operations in order to reduce costs. But we are now seeing the alarming long-term effect of those choices: in many cases, once manufacturing capabilities go away, so does much of the ability to innovate and compete. Manufacturing, it turns out, really matters in an innovation-driven economy. In Producing Prosperity, Harvard Business School professors Gary Pisano and Willy Shih show the disastrous consequences of years of poor sourcing decisions and underinvestment in manufacturing capabilities. They reveal how today’s undervalued manufacturing operations often hold the seeds of tomorrow’s innovative new products, arguing that companies must reinvest in new product and process development in the US industrial sector. Only by reviving this “industrial commons” can the world’s largest economy build the expertise and manufacturing muscle to regain competitive advantage. America needs a manufacturing renaissance—for restoring itself, and for the global economy as a whole. This will require major changes. Pisano and Shih show how company-level choices are key to the sustained success of industries and economies, and they provide business leaders with a framework for understanding the links between manufacturing and innovation that will enable them to make better outsourcing decisions. They also detail how government must change its support of basic and applied scientific research, and promote collaboration between business and academia. For executives, policymakers, academics, and innovators alike, Producing Prosperity provides the clearest and most compelling account yet of how the American economy lost its competitive edge—and how to get it back.