James K. Galbraith
In the press, at the Capitol, on Wall Street and around the world, people are waking up to the dangers of inequality as never before. Mainstream journalists now note that income inequality in America today is greater than at any time since 1929 - just before the Great Depression. Perhaps this is
not accidental.
Where does inequality come from? And how does it lead to economic instability?
In Inequality and Instability, leading economist James K. Galbraith demonstrates that finance is the driver converting inequality into instability. Those without money - made more
numerous by inequality - find little recourse but to the ancient remedy of the loan. Their urges and needs, for bad and for good, are abetted by the aggressive desire of those with money to lend. But if the balloon of debt explodes, as it did in 2008, it disrupts an entire economy built upon a
financial house of cards. And not merely in the United States: debt crises and economic instability can be linked to inequality all around the world.
To support this conclusion, Galbraith marshals the data as never before, examining it in light of geography, economic change, and
politics. For example, the dramatic rise of inequality in the United States in the 1990s correlated with the information-technology boom, whose wealth was concentrated in just three counties of Northern California, the Seattle area, and Manhattan. As for what drives this inequality, he writes, we
need look no further than the capital markets - since those at the top have benefited not simply from salaries and bonuses, but increasingly from stock options, asset valuations, and capital gains.
A landmark work of research and original insight, Inequality and Instability will
change forever the way we understand this pivotal topic.
1. The Physics and Ethics of Inequality
2. The Need for New Inequality Measures
3. Pay Inequality and World Development
4. Estimating the Inequality of Household Incomes
5. Economic Inequality and Political Regimes
6. The Geography of Inequality in America, 1969 to 2007
7.
State-Level Income Inequality and American Elections
8. Inequality and Unemployment in Europe: A Question of Levels
9. European Wages and the Flexibility Thesis
10. Globalization and Inequality in China
11. Finance and Power in Argentina and Brazil
12. Inequality in Cuba After
the Soviet Collapse
13. Economic Inequality and the World Crisis
Bibliography
There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.
James K. Galbraith is Professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations. He is a leading economist whose books include The Predator State, Inequality and Industrial
Change, and Created Unequal.
Measuring Inequality - Frank Cowell
The Oxford Handbook of Economic Inequality - Edited by Wiemer Salverda, Brian Nolan and Timothy M. Smeeding
Inequality and Growth in Modern China - Edited by Guanghua Wan
Growth, Inequality, and Poverty - Edited by Anthony Shorrocks and Rolph van der Hoeven
Inequality and the State - John Hills
Inequality and Poverty Re-Examined - Edited by Stephen P. Jenkins and John Micklewright
Time for a Visible Hand - Edited by Stephany Griffith-Jones, José Antonio Ocampo and Joseph E. Stiglitz
Crash and Beyond - Dr. Andrew Farlow
The Financial Crisis of Our Time - Robert W. Kolb
