Richard Pomfret is Professor of Economics at the University of Adelaide, and Adjunct Professor of International Economics at the Johns Hopkins University Bologna Center. He has held visiting positions in Canada, China, France, Italy, and the US. Richard Pomfret is the author of nineteen books and over one hundred papers, and he has served as an economic and policy adviser for the United Nations, the OECD, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank.
The first three pages of the Preface set the scene. If you are in a bookstore that allows more leisurely browsing the thirteen-page Introduction sets out the principal arguments—this is not a mystery book. The first eight chapters connect the dots in 172 pages, with more details and evidence in the endnotes. The final chapter presents the more speculative case for the Age of Fraternity.The Age of Equality is about economics as the long-term driving force behind the evolution of the world we live in. Economics is not the only force, but it is very powerful and its power is under-appreciated by many people.Zhou Enlai is often quoted as responding to a question about whether the 1789 French Revolution was a good thing with “It is too early to tell.” The consequences of the industrial revolution of the late 1700s are also not yet fully clear. They include unprecedented material prosperity, creation of a global economy, and weapons of mass destruction. To realize prosperity required an Age of Liberty, in which inherited privileges and restrictions were greatly reduced; and an Age of Equality, in which the benefits of material abundance would be more equitably shared within and across countries; and it still requires an Age of Fraternity in which the world's population faces existential challenges.
Richard Pomfret The Age of Equality: The Twentieth Century in Economic Perspective Harvard University Press296 pages, 5 3/4 x 8 1/2 inches ISBN 978 0674062177
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