Globalization and Progressive Economic Policy

by Dean Baker (Editor), Gerald Epstein (Editor), Robert Pollin (Editor)

In Globalization and Progressive Economic Policy, thirty-six prominent economists analyze the impact of the emerging global economy on our national sovereignty and standards of living. Does globalization cause inequality? Instability? Unemployment? Environmenal degradation? Or is it an engine of prosperity and wealth for the vast majority of the world's citizens? The authors analyze problems, institutions and possible government responses, and conclude that globalization can be a force for good or ill depending on the degree of regulation that governments and citizens can exercise over its trajectory.

Genres: Economics

532 pages, Paperback

First published November 5, 1998

About the author

Dean Baker is an American macroeconomist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, with Mark Weisbrot. He previously was a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor of economics at Bucknell University. He has a PhD in economics from the University of Michigan.

Reviews

[Eugene Kernes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Globalization involves increased interactions between people in different countries which changes relationships between nation-states and economies. These interactions does not mean that trade partners will become poorer, but the way in which the interactions happen can cause problems. Markets can focus on short-term metrics, do not utilize full human capacity, increase inequality which can increase inefficiency, and shift political power to influence decisions. The authors recognize that governments might not fulfill their designated tasks, but that states are an alternative determination to economic outcomes. As economies become globalized, their financial systems converge on monetary policies, which is a way that nations seem to lose control over their own economic policies.

To understand this book requires a lot of background information on what the authors are discussing. There are a lot of misperceptions that the authors have which cannot be reconciled such as claiming to want states to take charge over their economic policies, while taking away decisions from the people they are responsible for. The authors usually blame neoliberalism for various world economic maladies but they reference policies in which neoliberalism was the heterodox view rather than mainstream. What makes this ironic is that some authors do point out that the policies under observation come from a Keynesian era. By trying to deflect blame and problems to another economic perspective, the authors miss the problems created by their own perspectives.