Ordering Information
Paper Text,
175 pages
978-0-8157-0284-9,
28.95
"There is no shortage of talk about the middle class, say the middle 60 percent of income recipients. But here is a book that actually studies them from a global perspective: their interests, their attitudes, their prospects, their power. It is now all the more important to go back to the study of the redistributive effects, deliberate and accidental, of the fiscal system as a whole. With Stuck in the Middle, Musgrave and Pechman ride again."
-- Robert Solow, MIT, Nobel laureate in economics
Stuck in the Middle examines both economic and social public policy initiatives in its assertion that enhancing the welfare of people in developed and developing nations requires an explicit focus on the middle class.
Contents
Foreword
1. Overview: Fiscal Policy, Distribution, and the Middle Class
2. Stylized Facts on the Middle Class and the Development Process
3. The Future of Global Income Inequality
4. The Scope and Limits of Subsidies
5. Policies for Lower Global Wealth Inequality
6. Can Happiness Research Help Fiscal Policy?
7. The Politics of Effective and Sustainable Redistribution
"Sustaining the commitment to globalization and the growth and development it enables is crucial. Ensuring that the benefits outweigh the risks and that the benefits are spread widely and inclusively are the two critical underpinnings. Estache and Leipziger take a bold and important step in identifying the rising middle class and its voice in domestic and international policy as central to the solution."
-- A. Michael Spence, dean emeritus of the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, and Nobel laureate in Economics
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Antonio Estache
Antonio Estache is Bernard Van Ommeslaghe chair at the Université
Libre de Bruxelles working at the European Centre for Advanced
Research in Economics and Statistics. He has spent the last 25 years working at theWorld Bank on the reform and regulation of network industries and public sector reform. He has published extensively on these issues in top academic journals.
Danny Leipziger
Danny Leipziger heads the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network at the World Bank. His books include Chile: Policy Lessons (World Bank, 1999), coedited with Guillermo Perry, and Lessons from East Asia (University of Michigan, 1997).