About this item
In this book, Nobel Prize-winning economist Edmund Phelps draws on a lifetime of thinking to make a sweeping new argument about what makes nations prosper--and why the sources of that prosperity are under threat today. Why did prosperity explode in some nations between the 1820s and 1960s, creating not just unprecedented material wealth but "flourishing"--meaningful work, self-expression, and personal growth for more people than ever before? Phelps makes the case that the wellspring of this flourishing was modern values such as the desire to create, explore, and meet challenges. These values fueled the grassroots dynamism that was necessary for widespread, indigenous innovation. Most innovation wasn't driven by a few isolated visionaries like Henry Ford; rather, it was driven by millions of people empowered to think of, develop, and market innumerable new products and processes, and improvements to existing ones.
About the Author
Edmund Phelps, born in 1933 in Evanston, spent his childhood in Chicago and, from age six, grew up in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. He earned his B.A. from Amherst in 1955 and his Ph.D. from Yale in 1959. He is the winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Economics and the Director of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University. In 2010 he became Dean of the New Huadu Business School in Fuzhou, Shanghai, Beijing and Zurich. He has written a dozen full-length books on growth, unemployment, slumps, innovation and job satisfaction.
