Understanding American Economic Decline

by Michael A. Bernstein, David E. Adler, Robert Heilbroner

Overview

The public has been painfully aware of the economy's stagnation for a long time. In this major new volume, leading thinkers in the social sciences directly confront the various economic difficulties facing the United States today. Underlying each essay is the premise that these problems can be understood only in a broad historical context—that such difficulties arise not from cyclical phenomena, but from structural distortions in the economy. These essays furnish more than hard-hitting criticisms of the various received economic wisdoms: they offer hope as they formulate new economic approaches and policies for the present and the future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521450638
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/29/1994
Pages:	428
Product dimensions:	6.18(w) x 9.33(h) x 1.30(d)

Table of Contents

Foreword: writing about the economic future Robert L. Heilbroner; Preface David E. Adler; Acknowledgements; Part I. Historical Perspectives: 1. Understanding American economic decline: the contours of the late-twentieth-century experience Michael A. Bernstein; 2. Chickens home to roost: from prosperity to stagnation in the postwar US economy David M. Gordon; Part II. Institutional and Structural Perspectives: 3. Creating and extracting value: corporate investment behaviour and American economic performance William Lazonick; 4. Financial institutions and contemporary economic performance Jane Knodell; 5. Industries, trade and wages James K. Galbraith and Paulo Du Pin Calmon; 6. A comparative analysis of the sources of America's relative economic decline Jeffrey A. Hart; Part III. Policy Perspectives: 7. Right-wing economics in the 1980s: the anatomy of failure David M. Gordon, Thomas E. Weisskopf and Samuel Bowles; 8. The new economic stagnation and the contradictions of economic policy making Robert A. Blecker; Part IV. Social and Cultural Perspectives: 9. The changing contours of discrimination: race, gender and structural economic change M. V. Lee Badgett and Rhonda M. Williams; 10. Troubled times: the cultural dimensions of economic decline Katherine S. Newman; Part V. Conclusion: 11. American economics and the American economy in the American century: doctrinal legacies and contemporary policy problems Michael A. Bernstein; List of contributors; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"This book of essays by leading scholars, principally economists, provides a splendid summary of the root causes of the late-twentieth-century economic decline of the United States." Stuart Bruchey, The Journal of American History

"...the authors raise questions that are timely as a backdrop to the current debate over President Clinton's economic policy." The Washington Monthly

From the Publisher