Globalization and Its Discontents [antikvár]

Preface IN 1993 I left academia to serve on the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton. After years of research and teaching this was my first major foray into policy making, and more to the point, pohtics. From there I moved to the World Bank in 1997, where I served as chief economist and senior vice president for almost three years, leaving in January 2000.1 couldn't have chosen a more fascinating time to go into policy making. I was in the White House as Russia began its transition from communism and I worked at the Bank during the financial crisis that began in East Asia in 1997 and eventually enveloped the world. I had always been interested in economic development and what I saw radically changed my views of both globaHzation and development. I have written this book because while I was at the World Bank, I saw firsthand the devastating effect that globalization can have on developing countries, and especially the poor within those countries. I believe that globalization—the removal of barriers to free trade and the closer integration of national economies—can be a force for good and that it has the potential to enrich everyone in the world, particularly the poor. But I also beheve that if this is to be the case, the way globaUzation has been managed, including the international trade agreements that have played such a large role in removing those barriers and the poh-