Description
Book SynopsisA dramatic account of the UN's struggle over how best to understand severe inequities in the global economy.
Trade ReviewJohn Toye (British political economist) and Richard Toye (history, Cambridge Univ., UK), a father-son team, examine, as part of the United Nations Intellectual History Project, contributions to development economics by the UN and its specialized agencies. They acknowledge that, despite high aspirations by some for the UN to be the principal international organization to promote economic development, its status in the field of finance, development, and trade became ancillary to that of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization, which operate independently within the UN framework. The authors explain why the UN became marginal (inter alia, the Cold War, excessive demands by Third World countries, the Latin American debt crisis, and financial resources of the IMF and World Bank). The research output of a number of prominent economists in the UN's employ, however, left a lasting legacy to the trade and development debate. The substance of the research produced by these economists (e.g., Michal Kalecki, Nicholas Kaldor) during their UN service, and the historical, political, and bureaucratic setting in which the research was performed, is clearly and informatively summarized. Of special interest to students of economic development and trade policy and policy makers in these areas. Summing Up: Recommended. Public, academic, and professional library collections.
-- C. J. Siegman * formerly, Federal Reserve Board/International Monetary Fund , 2004dec CHOICE *
Table of ContentsForeword by Louis Emmerij, Richard Jolly, and Thomas G. Weiss
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. The UN Trade and Development Debates of the 1940s
2. The UN Recruits Economists
3. Michal Kalecki, the World Economic Report, and McCarthyism
4. From Full Employment to Economic Development
5. The Early Terms-of-Trade Controversy
6. ECLA, Industrialization, and Inflation
7. Competitive Coexistence and the Politics of Modernization
8. The Birth of UNCTAD
9. UNCTAD under Raúl Prebisch: Success or Failure?
10. World Monetary Problems and the Challenge of Commodities
11. The Conservative Counterrevolution of the 1980s
12. What Lessons for the Future?
Appendix: List of Archival Sources
Notes
Index
About the Authors
About the UN Intellectual History Project
