Creating a Learning Society ─ A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress: Reader's Edition

Creating a Learning Society explains how the countries of the world went from centuries of stagnation to the enormous increases in standards of living that have marked the last two hundred and fifty years: they have learned how to learn. Yet, as Stiglitz and Greenwald make clear, markets won't succeed on their own in creating the learning society that we need. Achieving this requires good governmental policy in a variety of areas, including trade, industry, and intellectual property. Indeed, the central thesis of this book is that every policy--tax, regulation, and expenditure--affects learning, and that policymakers have been remiss in ignoring this. Some policies, such as the Washington Consensus policies foisted on developing countries by the World Bank and IMF, actually impede learning.

In advanced and developing countries alike, Creating a Learning Society has had a remarkable reception. Governments in Malaysia, Singapore, Turkey, Jordan, and South Africa have signaled strong support for its policies, and a Dutch think tank closely allied with the government released a blueprint for creating a learning economy. This streamlined edition, intended for everyone from scholars to general readers, omits the original book's complicated mathematical equations and, in accessible language, focuses on its central messages and policy prescriptions.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University, former chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank, and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton. His books include Making Globalization Work; The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future;The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What to Do About Them; and Fair Trade for All(with Andrew Charlton). In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics.

Bruce C. Greenwald is Robert Heilbrunn Professor of Finance and Asset Management at Columbia Business School. He is director of the Heilbrunn Center for Graham and Dodd Investing. His books includeValue Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond; Competition Demystified: A Radically Simplified Approach to Business Strategy Portfolio;Towards a New Paradigm in Monetary Economics (with Joseph E. Stiglitz); andGlobalization: n. The Irrational Fear that Someone in China Will Take Your Job (with Judd Kahn).