by Joseph E. Stiglitz
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Product Description
"A damning denunciation of things as they are, and a platform for how we can do better."—Andrew Leonard, Salon
Four years after he outlined the challenges our increasingly interdependent world was facing in Globalization and Its Discontents, Joseph E. Stiglitz offered his agenda for reform. Now in paperback, Making Globalization Work offers inventive solutions to a host of problems, including the indebtedness of developing countries, international fiscal instability, and worldwide pollution. Stiglitz also argues for the reform of global financial institutions, trade agreements, and intellectual property laws, to make them better able to respond to the growing disparity between the richest and poorest countries. Now more than ever before, globalization has gathered the peoples of the world into one community, bringing with it a need to think and act globally. This trenchant, intellectually powerful book is an invaluable step in that process. This paperback edition contains a brand-new preface.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Fabulous Read, 2008-09-12
I have read 2 books from Stiglitz so far, and this book is by far one of the finest I have read on the topic ... extremely well written, clear, concise and lucid ... this book leaves no doubt about Stiglitz's excellent intellectual capacity ... although I liked reading "The World Is Flat," by Thomas Friedman, a comparision of that with "Making Globalisation Work," makes Friedman look pedestrian and lacking in depth.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
an important contribution to the debate, 2008-08-11
"Making Globalization Work" is a worthy follow-up to "Globalization and its Discontents". In fact, it is a more interesting read than the other book because it explores a broader array of issues. Here are some of its notable points.
Chapter 3 ("Making Trade Fair") documents the discrepancy between the rhetoric and the practice of developed countries that preach the virtues of free trade and push for greater trade liberalization in the developing countries while in the meantime broadly engaging in protectionism in areas that could benefit the developing countries. Erik Reinert would probably put it like this: Jeffersonian rhetoric, Hamiltonian practice. Although Stiglitz recognizes the damage of such a discrepancy, his proposal is not all out liberalization. His "extended market access proposal" would open the markets of the richer countries to the poorer countries without requiring reciprocity (he also argues for cutting agricultural subsidies in the rich countries and other such reforms). That means that the poor countries would be allowed to use certain policy tools (infant industry promotion) to assure development. Thus, Stiglitz holds a positions similar to that of Ha-Joon Chang, or Friedrich List and the German Historical School, for that matter: free trade trade has to be well-timed and the developing countries have to be given time to catch up.
Chapter 4 ("Patents, Profits, and People") provides a very good discussion of intellectual property. Stiglitz emphasizes that intellectual property protection is a means to an end: it is supposed to foster innovation. Thus, incentives for innovation (monopolistic rents) should be balanced against the inefficiencies that come from restricting the use of information, i.e. a public good. The author spends quite some time on patents in medical research. In case you read this book and become interested in the issue, Dean Baker's "The Conservative Nanny State" (provided online for free by Dean Baker himself) includes another interesting discussion of patents and copycat drugs.
Chapter 5 ("Lifting the Resource Curse") is about the problems that resource rich countries face. This includes abuses by private companies that exploit the resources, a potentially predatory state, and currency appreciation that imposes enormous costs on other export industries (the "Dutch disease"). Among many other things, Stiglitz proposes a way to combat currency appreciation: reserve of foreign currencies that could be used when the economy needs stabilizing.
These several chapters are just a taste of things found in the book. Other chapters address other important issues such as global warming (Chapter 6), country debt problems (Chapter 8), and the instability of the global reserve system (Chapter 9). Students fresh out of introductory economics courses should find themselves engaged as well: market failures (market power and all sorts of externalities), appropriate incentives, and public goods are some of the more frequently recurring themes.
If "Globalization and its Discontents" had the problem of being somewhat self-congratulatory, "Making Globalization Work" has a different flaw: its tone sometimes turns naive. For instance, these words can be found in the last chapter: "America's standing in the world has long been based not just on its economic and military power but on its moral leadership, on doing what is right and fair". Stiglitz thus treats certain unfair trade practices as a temporary aberration from the usual moral leadership. People who are quick to remember, among many other things, the CIA-led coups of democratically elected leaders in Iran (1950s) and Chile (1970s), the support for Latin American death squads or Indonesia when it invaded East Timor, will probably not take such remarks about "moral leadership" too seriously. There are other examples but I believe this one suffices for illustration.
Luckily, there is enough substance and interesting ideas in this book to make one overlook this one flaw. "Making Globalization Work" is a very important contribution to the debate and should be read by anyone interested in globalization and related issues.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Prescription for the Discontents, 2008-05-29
Since the Berlin Wall fell, the fact is, the next level of globalization has produced far too many losers and not enough winners. We are continuing to poison the environment; there are too many people living on less than $2 a day; states without security have left the door for terrorists and other malcontents to run rampant. It appears to some that the West will continue to underdevelop the rest of the world for the sake of increased profits.
Yet, there is some hope on the horizon. Joseph Stiglitz, former lead economist at the World Bank and Nobel Prize winner offers a great follow up to "Globalization and Its Discontents." Stiglitz delineates the problems that the current global economic regime has caused and offers some prescriptions to ameliorate them.
His look into the unequal demands from the West to underdeveloped countries is especially cogent. While trade barriers, industrial subsidies and tariffs are removed from developing countries, Europe and the United States continue their archaic agricultural subsidies. These subsidies improve the lot of a few (very few) farmers in the West, yet, make prices so artificially low that it erases the comparative advantage of developing countries in the agricultural system.
Other global issues, such as Global Warming, the debt of the developing world and the issues facing nations with only primary production are also well elaborated. As Global Warming is a global issue, it should be dealt with as such. Stiglitz' blame rest firmly on the United States for the continuing problems. Jubilee type initiatives are pushed for debt relief; and, development towards secondary industry is suggested for those nations, such as Botswana, caught in the Resource Trap.
I did have a few problems with the work. Corruption, both corporate and national, receives only lip service from Stiglitz in this book. There are a few of his familiar jabs at the International Monetary Fund, which after reading "Globalization and Its Discontents," and "Rethinking the Asian Miracle" become trite and dull. These made the book appear to be slanted against both the IMF and his successors at the World Bank.
But, my biggest issue involved the "global greenback." Stiglitz correctly points to the currency reserve regime as an inducer of instability and a extractor of global surplus from developing to developed countries. He also correctly assesses that we should re-make the reserve system as Bretton Woods had done in the 1940s. Yet, his method is pie-in-the-sky, at best and crazy at worst. Now I am by practice a pro-Internationalist and believe in more global governance. Yet, his "global greenback" regime to replace the holding of dollars or euros is unworkable, all the reasons for which I'm not even going to try to go into here.
In total, Stiglitz work is very good for its purposes. His ability to take his knowledge of the global economy and put it into words is unparalleled by any other major economist. This book should be a must read in concert with his "Globalization and Its Discontents" and Sen's "Development as Freedom." Add it to your shopping cart / wish list.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Much Needed Work!, 2008-04-07
In the preface to The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money John Maynard Keynes wrote `The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds". In his timely and much needed Making Globalization Work Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz attempts to bring the market under control and proposes a myriad of innovative mechanisms which will make `globalization work.' While I admire Stiglitz's work and his profound commitment to real social justice, it is crucial to critique his methodology and his idea of fair trade. While most of his remedies are proactive and attainable, his idealism of the market needs to be questioned. In particular, many of his proposed solutions call for using the very market mechanisms that have created this markedly unjust and stratified world.
Coming out boldly against Thomas L. Friedman's The World is Flat, Stiglitz asserts that `Not only is the world not flat: in many ways it has been getting less flat'(57). All of the issues Stiglitz champions are vital and indeed, some, such as climate change, threaten our very survival as humans. Nevertheless, Stiglitz's chapters on multinational corporations and the resource curse seem to be the most misguided and lack a complete understanding of the powerful forces that will not allow such `new ideas' to be accepted. As an internationalist, I believe his recommendations are fair and just. Yet, I see very little hope in core states willingly giving up their hegemony over the periphery, even if it is for their own good.
Stiglitz comes out strongly against multinational corporations, hereafter MNCs. As he puts it, they `have come to symbolize what is wrong with globalization' as they are seen by many as the `primary cause of the problem' (187). The problem is not that MNCs are powerful, it is the fact they are often more powerful than nation states. Strong MNCs challenge the autonomy of periphery states, and as is the case, the core states support them in their endeavors. Capitalism, by its very nature, is destructive to those who lack capital. Stiglitz proposes `limiting the power of corporations' (199) but their power is most dangerous in poor states, which lack the ability to limit MNCs. Yet, he neglects to show how this control will be implemented.
The United States, as chief imperialist after the Second World War, has continually come to the defense of its corporations. No where is this more evident than in Latin America. In 1954, Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz sought to limit the power of United Fruit Company, than the largest land owner in the country and was overthrown in a C.I.A orchestrated coup d'état. To escape taxation--another ubiquitous problem with MNCs--United Fruit had declared the land to be forth a little more than half a million dollars. When the Arbenz government sought to buy the land at that price, the company asked for $16 million dollars. Arbenz refused their demand and was ousted and neither the United Nations nor the Organization of American States came to his rescue. In more recent times, the Venezuelan government nationalized it petroleum industry. Because the previous contracts had been negotiated with governments of the past, who lacked the mandate of the people, President Hugo Chavez sought to renegotiate with the MNCs, such as Exxon-Mobile. While some companies took the governments offer, Exxon successfully took the Venezuelan government to court and $12 billion of state assets are currently frozen. What can we make of this? How can corporations such as Exxon be controlled and their power limited? Add to the mix the fact that prominent government officials sit on the board for many of the same MNCs who are accused of having the worst policies, lacking oversight and causing the most economic and social destruction. How do we reconcile this?
Corporate crime inflicts far more damage than corruption or for that matter, anything else. To take one example, the savings and loan fraud - which former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh called "the biggest white collar swindle in the history our nation" - cost us anywhere from $300 billion to $500 billion. That is just one case! Stiglitz understands this, but is hopeful that the corporate social responsibility movement will step in and put pressure on MNCs to reform. While this is certainly possible in some sectors, and many companies have in fact made strides in becoming more socially responsible, what should be done about the Exxons of the world? People are concerned more about the high price of gasoline they must pay than the increased price of milk in the slums of Caracas. Holding these companies accountable is an imperative, but so far, there is no large movement to limits the power that MNCs have on other states. Furthermore, Stiglitz seems to contradict his own argument.
While global warming and its attendant consequences are having a drastic effect on the world's poor, Stiglitz cannot make the connection that perhaps it is capitalism and MNCs that have produced such conditions. Even if corporations were more socially responsible, they would continue to pollute the environment. To bring in a case from my own research, the example of Bolivia's water wars perfectly illustrates this contingency. The Bolivian government has argued for years that Western nations should compensate periphery states for the effects of global warming. The Andean nation of Bolivia, which is by far the poorest country in Latin America, has in recent decades seen the melting of its glaciers high in the Andes. These glaciers provide drinking war to much of the countries poor, especially those in La Paz and El Alto. At the same time, efforts have been made, most notably by U.S. firm Bechtel to privatize Bolivia's drinking war. Even collected rain water! This affront to civility and decency failed not because of a corporate responsibility but rather by protests initiated by poor compesinos who eventually drove the firm out.
In chapter 5, Stiglitz discusses the `paradox of plenty' where countries `richly endowed with natural resources' have `lower growth and higher poverty rates than other countries not so endowed' (134). To Stiglitz, the problem is two fold. First, countries do not get full value for their natural resources. This is a problem inherent in international trade. It is agreed that countries get shafted but the real question is why? As Raul Prebirsh demonstrated in the 50's, periphery states do not grow when they join the Western economic system because the system is inherently flawed and created in such a way as to make periphery states dependent on core states.
Trade between a core and periphery state invariably benefits the former and despite any short term gains, hurts the latter. Here, he has some of his brightest moments. He writes `Wealth generates power, the power that enables the ruling class to maintain that wealth' (137). This is true within countries but it is also true at the macro level, where states that have considerable political, economic and most importantly, military power, are able to accumulate even greater wealth. He also laments unfair privatization (which his friend Jeff Sachs contributed to in Russia.) but I don't believe he sees privatization as inherently unfair. As for his agenda towards solving the situation, Stiglitz misses some important facts. In order to reduce arms control, the biggest arms producers must be reigned in. Unfortunately, these same producers come from the worlds most powerful countries, and are in fact, MNCs. Furthermore, certification has come under a lot of scrutiny. The Kimberly Process essentially gave monopoly power to the world's largest diamond manufacturers by taking out secondary suppliers. This is anti-competitive, which Stiglitz seems as very harmful. While one can easily constructive examples of certification, who should implement it and how is the issue at hand decided? This seems like another area where the geopolitical goals of unilateral nation states will become more important.
Writing a critique of Stiglitz is no easy feat, and in fact, I do not really hold Stiglitz accountable for the holes in his argument because of the magnitude of the issue he is dealing with. He makes many generalizations and even if 99% of them are correct, critics can point to a single anomaly to try to disprove him. While Stiglitz is a committed socialist, he puts too much trust in the market mechanism which has never proven to be fair.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
excellent, 2008-04-05
The product arrived in a timely fashion and in the condition described. Excellent seller. Would do business again.
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