The New Russia: Transition Gone Awry

This book delivers an unpopular message: the West has played a pivotal role in the Russian economic disaster of the 1990s. Western advisors, including the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury, applied a narrow conception of economics that pushed Russia, after more than seventy years of communism, toward another failed utopia.

The twenty-six contributions to this book are divided into three parts: theory, evidence, and policy. Part One directly challenges orthodox economic theory for obscuring the necessary role of government in creating and sustaining a market system and features essays by three Nobel laureates in economics--Kenneth J. Arrow, Lawrence R. Klein, and James Tobin. Part Two describes the dimensions of the economic crisis in Russia and presents a Russian perspective on the failure of shock therapy. Part Three presents policy recommendations, with special attention given to improving the integrity and administrative competence of the Russian government.

Author: Lawrence Klein
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 02/01/2002
Pages: 480
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.40lbs
Size: 9.02h x 6.04w x 1.17d
ISBN: 9780804741651

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 08/01/2001 pg. 83
Choice 11/01/2001 pg. 560

About the Author
Lawrence R. Klein, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1980, is Benjamin Franklin Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his many books is The Economics of Supply and Demand. Marshall Pomer is President of the Macroeconomic Policy Institute, Santa Cruz, California. He is the author of Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in the United States: A Segmentation Perspective.