Authors: Daniel Halliday and John Thrasher

Publication Date: 2020 

Overview 

For the sake of conciseness, I omitted the issue of ethics in my recent book, Democracy and Capitalism Brief. However, I strongly recommend The Ethics of Capitalism: An Introduction by Daniel Halliday and John Thrasher. This insightful work explores critical questions surrounding capitalism and its moral dimensions. 

Summary 

In The Ethics of Capitalism: An Introduction, Daniel Halliday and John Thrasher tackle key issues, such as alternatives to capitalism and the provocative question of whether the ethics of capitalism are an oxymoron (pp. 9-17). Their analysis provides a robust foundation for understanding the moral complexities of capitalist systems. 

This book is poised to remain a must-read for years to come, offering valuable perspectives for anyone interested in the intersection of ethics and economics.

Recommended Reading: How China Escaped the Poverty Trap

Author: Yuen Yuen Ang

Reviewed by: Winner, Peter Katzenstein Book Prize, Department of Government, Cornell University

Publication Date: 03/15/2022 

Overview

This month’s top pick, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap by Yuen Yuen Ang, encapsulates a remarkable story in its title. China underwent profound changes over the last century, transforming from an impoverished nation to a developed economic powerhouse. 

Summary

Before markets opened in 1978, China was a struggling planned economy under a Maoist bureaucracy. In just three decades, it became the world’s second-largest economy, now guided by highly entrepreneurial bureaucrats. In How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, Yuen Yuen Ang unravels this astonishing metamorphosis. 

Rather than arguing that strong institutions of good governance drive markets or that growth enables good governance, Ang introduces a dynamic framework for understanding development. She posits that successful development is a co-evolutionary process where markets and governments mutually adapt. By mapping this co-evolution, Ang reaches a startling conclusion: poor and weak countries can escape the poverty trap by first harnessing weak institutions—features that defy norms of good governance—to build markets. 

Ang emphasizes that adaptive processes, though critical for development, do not occur automatically. She highlights three universal roadblocks to adaptation and examines how Chinese reformers crafted enabling conditions for effective improvisation. 

Broader Implications

How China Escaped the Poverty Trap offers the most comprehensive synthesis to date of the interacting forces behind China’s dramatic transformation and the challenges it faces today. Beyond China, Ang traces the co-evolutionary sequence of development in late medieval Europe, the antebellum United States, and contemporary Nigeria, uncovering surprising parallels across these diverse cases. 

Indispensable for those invested in development, this groundbreaking book challenges linear thinking and illuminates an alternative path out of poverty traps.