Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World: A New Economics for the Middle Class, the Global Poor, and Our Climate

by Dani Rodrik

New, practical approaches to confronting today’s most daunting global issues

Fighting climate change, saving democracy, and eradicating poverty are urgent global challenges, yet the world’s leaders continue to pursue outdated policies that focus on one while worsening the tradeoffs between each of them. Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World shows how the nations of the world can achieve all three objectives.

Dani Rodrik provides a bold new vision of globalization, one in which we accelerate the green transition to achieve a sustainable planet, shore up the middle class to restore democracy’s foundations, and hasten economic revitalization in the developing world to put an end to poverty. The rising tide of authoritarianism has demonstrated our inability to alleviate economic anxieties. Economic nationalism has raised the specter of increased protectionism and deteriorating prospects for economic growth. And automation and other new technologies have undercut the advantages of low-cost, unskilled labor in manufacturing and export-oriented industrialization. Rodrik reveals how we can restore prosperity through new forms of collaborative public-private action—to promote renewables and green industries, middle-class jobs, and enhanced productivity in labor-absorbing services—even in the absence of global cooperation. He explains why this new kind of globalization must also recognize the legitimate desire of governments to pursue their economic, social, and security interests autonomously.

Turning conventional economic wisdom on its head, Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World builds on practices that work while radically transforming those that don’t, presenting a grounded, clear-eyed approach to tackling the problems that affect us all, at home and around the world.

Genres: Economics, Politics, Nonfiction

280 pages, Hardcover

Published November 4, 2025

About the author

Dani Rodrik is the Rafiq Hariri Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

About my bad grade of this book: it has nothing to do with the way it was written, but rather that I found that he made a lot of baseless claims, and drew a lot of baseless conclusions.

Am I a fan of neoliberalism? I can’t say I am, but even with that I want to know exactly how a rise in populism, xenophobia and Islamophobia is due to a backlash of neoliberalism.
How is it a backlash of neoliberalism that Trump was elected president in 2016? And then another time in 2024? I’m not buying that conclusion, let alone a conclusion that has no actual data behind it. It’s not like populism, xenophobia and prejudice against people of different religions are new phenomena that did not exist before the rise of neoliberalism. Like neither Hitler nor Mussolini had populist ideas.

I’m also wondering about why, in particular, he talks about a hyperglobalisation — what does that term actually mean, and just how is the globalisation we see today (and have seen since the 1980’s) so very different that it is a hyperglobalisation? Rodrik mentions a few traits, but those traits are not unique to the type of globalisation we see today.
I do not necessarily disagree that there is a hyperglobalisation today, but since it is not properly defined I cannot agree with it. It is one thing to say that we live in a hyperglobalisation because technology has made it possible for everything regarding trade and finances to move faster and faster, but he doesn’t say anything like this. He points to companies being able to roam freely around the world, and all I could think of was East India Company.

Because of all uncertainties, I just feel frustrated reading this book.

[Leonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Professor Rodrik has always been one of my favourite authors, especially on the topics of globalisation. Yet again, he doesn't disappoint, especially in his globalisation paradox "trilemma" fashion. He divided his paradigm into three problems of climate change, the declining middle class and the worsening global poor. He advocates yet again a new paradigm away from the old models of export-oriented industrialisation, and hyperglobalisation but a new form of development policies through support for greater service sector with more state capacity in the form of "embedded autonomy" citing Peter Evans. The rise of geopolitical tensions between the US and China, as well as the growing move away from globalisation provides a nuanced view of supporting "different recipes" across nations.

A great book yet again, but I disagreed with his view that a progressive wealth tax would generate $280 billion.

[Nai Hola · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable read, skeptical of thesis. Attributes China's poverty alleviation to large scale state intervention with subsidies and currency devaluation; states the shift from agriculture to manufacturing hence econ growth can't be replicated worldwide due to productivity gains introduced by technology. Calls for service based industries to shoulder growth and provide jobs for a burgeoning middle class

Made me think a lot about my time in Tonga. He mentioned that the informal sector declines as economic opportunities increase. I definitely believe this; second hand retail/barbecue tent clusters dominate street corners in Nuku'Alofa

[Reko Wenell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Offers some interesting big pictures ideas for pragmatic ideas to major economic issues. The main, carrying idea is to fit the solutions to political (and other) realities in the world as it is instead of advocating for ideal solutions that fail to produce good outcomes in an imperfect world. Much food for thought certainly and it was overall a very nice and easy listen as well.

[Nico Brennan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Feels like what the London consensus were trying to say but in far less wordy and obtuse terms