Listed below are some of the book summaries that we have in our library.

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Economic and Policy Books* A-F G-M N-S T-Z

Government Policies and Educational Priorities
Edited by Marvin H. Kosters
AEI Press October 1999
ISBN 0844740764
129 pages

College education has long been viewed as a key to economic advancement in American society, but in the past two decades the cost of paying for college has become significantly more burdensome for many students and their families. The essays in this volume examine federal subsidies for college education in light of both the broader aims of education policy and the entire sequence of investments that parents and students make in education. In particular, the authors consider whether federal policy should give higher priority to college education than to education at lower levels, and estimate the degree to which larger federal subsidies for college tuition are likely to increase enrollment, especially for youths from low-income families.

The editor, Marvin H. Kosters, is a resident scholar and the director of economic policy studies at AEI. The other contributors are Stephen V. Cameron, an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at Columbia University; Eric A. Hanushek, a professor of economics and public policy and the director of the W. Allen Wallis Institute in Political Economy at the University of Rochester; James J. Heckman, the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago; Caroline Minter Hoxby, an associate professor of economics at Harvard University; and Thomas J. Kane, an associate professor of public policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Genetic Testing and the Use of Information
Edited by Clarisa Long
AEI Press 1st edition (December 1999)
ISBN 0844741108
144 pages

This book presents the thinking of six distinguished scholars about key ethical and policy issues related to genetic testing, including genetic privacy, the regulation of genetic testing, and genetic discrimination.

Clarisa Long edited the volume and contributed the introduction. She worked on this project as an Abramson fellow at AEI, and she is now an associate professor of law at the University of Virginia and a research fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The other contributors are Ellen Wright Clayton, an associate professor of both pediatrics and law at Vanderbilt University; David Korn, the senior vice president for biomedical and health sciences research at the Association of American Medical Colleges and the vice president, dean, and professor of pathology emeritus at the Stanford University School of Medicine; Philip R. Reilly, executive director of the Shriver Center for Mental Retardation; Karen Rothberg, the Marjorie Cook Professor of Law and the founding director of the law and health care program at the University of Maryland School of Law; and Michael S. Watson, the vice president for laboratory affairs and a director of the American College of Medical Genetics. The following summary is based on Long's introduction to the volume.

Governing the Postal Service
Edited by J. Gregory Sidak
AEI Press December 1994
ISBN 0844738921
177 pages

This book contains six essays on the law and economics of postal regulation, plus commentaries and discussion by expert respondents, originally presented at AEI conferences in September 1993 and May 1994. The editor is a resident scholar at AEI. A summary of the book follows.
During the 1980s, the policy debate over the U.S. Postal Service stalled. Much intellectual effort had previously been devoted to attacking the postal monopoly and demonstrating the benefits of privatizing the Postal Service. But privatization was never seriously considered in the political arena, even at the height of the Reagan administration, and subsequent political changes have made the prospects for such a policy even more remote.

Government-Sponsored Enterprises: Mercantilist Companies in the Modern World
By Thomas H. Stanton
AEI Press December 2001
ISBN 0844741604
139 pages

This book sounds a note of alarm about the generally weak financial supervision and low capital standards of the major government-sponsored enterprises. Author Thomas H. Stanton's earlier book on GSEs, A State of Risk (HarperCollins, 1991), helped persuade policymakers to create a new government financial regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Yet, the government remains largely unable to address the financial risks inherent in these highly leveraged institutions.

Stanton is an attorney, the chairman of the Standing Panel on Executive Organization and Management of the National Academy of Public Administration, and a fellow of the Center for the Study of American Government at Johns Hopkins University. A summary of the book follows.

Health Care Choices: Private Contracts as Instruments of Health Reform
By Clark C. Havighurst
AEI Press December 1994
ISBN 0844738670
341 pages

This book examines the current shortcomings and potential virtues of private contracts as instruments defining the legal rights of patients and the obligations of health plans and providers. The author is the William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke University. A summary of the book follows.

Although written at a time when the nation was looking to Washington for critical decisions about health care, this book is principally concerned with private health care choices--specifically, with the effectiveness of private contracts as instruments memorializing the choices that consumers make. Its primary objective is to inspire organized health plans to write contracts with their subscribers that more directly address the cost problem that so bedevils U.S. health care. Only by so doing can they give consumers a full range of explicit health care choices. Without better contracts, consumers can choose only different versions of the same costly product--state-of-the-art, American-style medical care. This book suggests how health plans could offer to consumers contracts that authorize providers to take efficient, responsible cost-saving measures that are deterred by legal risks today.

Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism
By Joshua Muravchik
Encounter Books 1st edition (March 2002)
ISBN 1893554457
417 pages

While socialism had established itself as a fact of life by the beginning of the twentieth century, it did not succeed in creating societies of abundance or in giving birth to "the New Man." Each failure inspired new searches for the true path that would finally lead to the promised land: revolution, communes, social democracy, communism, fascism, Third World socialism. None worked, and some exacted staggering human tolls. Then, after 200 years of wishful thinking and fitful governance, socialism suddenly imploded in a drama of falling walls and collapsing regimes and disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. In this book, Joshua Muravchik traces this fiery trajectory through sketches of the people who developed the theory, led it to power, and presided over its collapse.

Muravchik is a resident scholar at AEI and an adjunct professor at the Institute of World Politics. His books include The Imperative of American Leadership: A Challenge to Neo-Isolationism (AEI Press, 1996) and Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America's Destiny (AEI Press, 1991).

Industrial Policy and Semiconductors: Missing the Target
By Andrew Dick
AEI Press October 1995
ISBN 0844770558
85 pages

This book is a study of government policies to target so-called strategic industries with trade and industrial policies. It compares the arguments for targeting with their practical results in numerous industries and evaluates in particular the performance of targeting in the semiconductor industry. The author is assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. A summary of the book follows.

One of the most enduring lessons from history is that a policy of free trade raises countries' standards of living and expands their opportunities for economic growth. Sometimes policy makers have heeded this lesson; other times they have not. Protectionist policies lengthened and deepened the Great Depression in the 1930s. In the 1950s and 1960s, by comparison, trade liberalization between the United States and its trading partners ushered in unparalleled growth and prosperity. The 1970s saw the pendulum swing back, as industrial countries once again raised trade barriers and industrial policies grew more interventionist.

Inequality and Tax Policy
Edited by Kevin A. Hassett and R. Glenn Hubbard
AEI Press 1st edition (December 2001)
ISBN 0844741442
245 pages

In this volume, leading specialists in public finance, macroeconomics, and political economy draw from the most current research to explore key interactions among policy, inequality, and the economy. The contributors offer their assessments of whether the current tax system is successfully achieving redistribution and whether the results would be worse under a flat tax.
Kevin A. Hassett is a resident scholar at AEI. He previously was an economist for the Federal Reserve System's Board of Governors in its Division of Research and Statistics. R. Glenn Hubbard is the chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and was previously a visiting scholar at the Institute. Hassett and Hubbard have also coedited Transition Costs of Fundamental Tax Reform (AEI Press, 2001) and coauthored The Magic Mountain: A Guide to Defining and Using a Budget Surplus (AEI Press, 1999). A summary of Inequality and Tax Policy follows.

The public debate over tax policy frequently turns on distributional issues. Tax reform proponents, for example, argue that the long-run growth effects of lower marginal tax rates benefit citizens situated throughout the income distribution, while opponents argue that, by starting from a progressive tax structure, marginal tax rate reductions often benefit the wealthy the most and are therefore undesirable. Despite the strong views, references to academic findings in the course of this debate are rare, and many important questions lurk below the surface. How do taxes affect the distribution of income when all dynamic effects are accounted for? Does an equalization of the income distribution have important economic effects? Do changes in equality lead to changes in progressivity? Is entrepreneurial activity especially sensitive to attempts to redistribute income? Any rational position on economic policy must be informed about these key issues.

Institutions and Trade Policy
By J. Michael Finger, with others
Edward Elgar Pub. July 2002
ISBN 1840649844
280 pages

This book gathers eighteen essays by J. Michael Finger, some co-written with colleagues. The essays represent almost thirty years of Finger's work as a high-level official at the UN Conference on Trade and Development, U.S. Treasury Department, and World Bank. They report some of the core analytical thinking behind positions taken by these agencies on major issues in international trade policy. Topics include tariffs and other instruments of import policy, the "new international economic order," antidumping, and the treatment of developing countries in the GATT/WTO trading system.

Finger is a resident scholar at AEI. Before joining the Institute, he was the lead economist for trade policy at the World Bank. His books include Antidumping: How It Works and Who Gets Hurt (1993, editor) and The Uruguay Round: A Handbook for the Multilateral Trade Negotiations (1987, coeditor with Andrzej Olechowski). The author's summary of Institutions and Trade Policy follows.

The principal theme of the essays in this book is the shift of view on the relationship between trade and development, from the earlier presumption that developing countries must receive special treatment to today's view that development is best served if developing countries aggressively exploit opportunities that international trade offers.

Intellectual Property Rights in Emerging Markets
Edited by Clarisa Long
The AEI Press June 15, 2000
ISBN 0844741264
150 pages

This book examines intellectual property laws in developing countries and how those laws can either attract or hurt U.S. companies holding rights such as patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Specifically, the work focuses on the treatment of intellectual property in China, India, and Latin America and the relative progress toward U.S. standards of protection in those markets. Three scholars each contribute a chapter: Mark Groombridge, a research fellow at the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute and coauthor of Tiger by the Tail: China and the World Trade Organization (AEI Press, 1999), writes about China; Shondeep Banerji, a professor of international political economy at the London School of Economics, considers India; and Edgardo Buscaglia, a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, focuses on Latin America. The editor, Clarisa Long, is an associate professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and editor of Genetic Testing and the Use of Information (AEI Press, 1999). This summary is adapted from her introduction.

International intellectual property rights have emerged as one of the most important foreign policy issues for many industrialized countries, particularly the United States. U.S. companies complain that they have suffered greatly from the lack of rigorous and uniform international standards for intellectual property rights. The U.S. government has undertaken efforts to strengthen worldwide protection of intellectual property rights through bilateral consultations with other countries and multilateral fora such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Most developing countries have committed themselves, pursuant to recent treaties, to raising their standards of intellectual property protection within a grace period. How quickly increased standards of protection will be adopted, and what form those standards will take, remains an open question.

International Financial Markets: Harmonization vs. Competition
Edited by Claude E. Barfield
AEI Press 1st edition (January 1996)
ISBN 084473926X
264 pages

This book is a volume of essays that analyze the costs and benefits of policies aimed at harmonizing the regulatory schemes of different nations as opposed to allowing national regimes to compete. The editor is a resident scholar at AEI. Excerpts from the book's introduction follow.

Just after the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations concluded, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) issued a ministerial communique looking to future trade issues for the 1990s.

International Trade in Telecommunications
By Ronald A. Cass and John Haring
AEI Press February 1998
ISBN 0844740713
291 pages

As telecommunications service markets in individual countries have become less regulated and more competitive, telecommunications equipment has developed a global market in which sales for new systems are hotly contested and competition, particularly technology-based competition, is fierce. The authors consider whether any special circumstances justify departure from free trade in telecommunications equipment and whether more efficacious means for addressing any such circumstances exist, apart from trade-related decisions.

Ronald A. Cass is dean and Melville Madison Bigelow Professor of Law at Boston University. John Haring is a principal in Strategic Policy Research, an economics consultancy based in Bethesda, Maryland.

Korea Approaches Reunification
By Nicholas N. Eberstadt
M.E.Sharpe (April 1995)
ISBN 1563245574
206 pages

In the nearly fifty years since Korea's 1945 partition, the Communist North and the pro-Western South have erected economies and political structures that, while based in Korean culture, have nevertheless diverged in a dramatic manner. This book examines the economic, social, and political trends in the two Koreas since their division and examines the role that international powers--in particular, the United States--might play in promoting a successful reunification. The author is a visiting scholar at AEI and a visiting fellow at the Center for Population Studies, Harvard University. Excerpts from the book's introduction follow.

The thesis of this book is that the divided Korean nation is drawing steadily closer to the moment of its ultimate reunification. The corollary to this thesis is that now is the time for Korea--and its foreign friends--to prepare for what reunification is likely to bring. Reunification has been a cherished dream for millions of people in this unhappily partitioned peninsula for decades. But for the welfare of all Koreans, and indeed of the entire international community, it is essential that the momentous events ahead be guided by judicious reason, not by emotion. The actual steps by which reunification is finally attained seem likely to expose Koreans on both sides of the demarcation line to extraordinary and mounting peril--and to pose unprecedented challenges to South Korea's social and political system to undertake adjustments in the name of national unity.

Korea's Future and the Great Powers
Edited by Nicholas Eberstadt and Richard J. Ellings
University of Washington Press (July 2001)
ISBN 0295981296
384 pages

This volume provides scholars and policymakers with an in-depth analysis of the strategic challenges that face the great Pacific powers (China, Japan, Russia, and the United States) in the Korean peninsula and offers an assessment of the choices that lie ahead for their respective Korea policies. Can the Pacific powers cooperate in the Korean theater-even in the event of sudden, dramatic, and potentially destabilizing changes within the peninsula? More particularly, how could dramatic changes in Korea's political and security environment affect U.S. national interests-and how should America be prepared to respond to these long-range contingencies?

Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. Richard J. Ellings is president and cofounder of the National Bureau of Asian Research. The contributors are Michael H. Armacost, Gifford Combs, Chuck Downs, Herbert J. Ellison, Robert L. Gallucci, Chae-Jin Lee, Michael McDevitt, Marcus Noland, Douglas H. Paal, Kenneth B. Pyle, and Robert A. Scalapino. This summary is adapted from the editors' introduction to the volume.

Lomborg Gets the Galileo Treatment Or, "'Shut up,' They Explained"
By Steven F. Hayward
AEI Online (Washington) Jan 1, 2003

The Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty recently ruled that Bjørn Lomborg's book The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the True State of the Planet constitutes "scientific dishonesty." Far from proving that Lomborg engaged in academic or scientific fraud, however, the report reveals the highly politicized state of environmental science: Lomborg's real sin is environmental incorrectness.

As with the line from a Ring Lardner story that reads "'Shut up,' he explained," the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty issued an official ruling that Bjørn Lomborg's book The Skeptical Environmentalist constitutes "scientific dishonesty."[1] In doing so, the DCSD--a branch of the Danish Research Agency, equivalent to our National Academy of Sciences--may have done for Lomborg and sensible environmental discourse what the Inquisition did for Galileo and astronomy in the seventeenth century. The report makes clear just how much "environmental science" has become politicized.

Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli's Iron Rules Are as Timely Today as Five Centuries Ago
By Michael A. Ledeen
St. Martin's Press (May 1999)
ISBN 031220471X
202 pages

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) devoted much of his considerable energy and talent to identifying and understanding the characteristics of good and bad leaders. In this lively book, Michael A. Ledeen recasts Machiavelli's basic principles of leadership and assesses contemporary giants of statecraft, commerce, military affairs, and sports in light of Machiavelli's enduring standards of excellence. The following summary is adapted from the introduction.

Michael A. Ledeen holds the Freedom Chair at AEI. His previous books include Freedom Betrayed: How America Led a Global Democratic Revolution, Won the Cold War, and Walked Away (1996), Superpower Dilemmas: The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. at Century's End (1991); and Perilous Statecraft: An Insider's Account of the Iran-Contra Affair (1988).
The purpose of Machiavelli on Modern Leadership is the same as Niccolò Machiavelli's own: to present the basic principles of the proper and successful use of power in language that contemporary leaders can understand, the better to advance the common good.

Making Patriots
By Walter Berns
University of Chicago Press (Trd); Reprint edition (November 2002)
ISBN 0226044386
144 pages

In this book, Walter Berns discusses the history and philosophy of patriotism. He focuses on how to foster love of country in a commercial republic, a form of government that emphasizes individuality and autonomy rather than the public-mindedness traditionally required of patriots. Berns is a resident scholar at AEI and a professor of government emeritus at Georgetown University. His books include Taking the Constitution Seriously (1987) and In Defense of Liberal Democracy (1984).

In the ancient-Greek city of Sparta, every factor, geographic and demographic, and every detail of education, contributed to public spiritedness. Thus, it is not by chance that the words Spartan and patriot are almost synonymous.

Managed Care and Changing Health Care Markets
Edited by Michael A. Morrisey
AEI Press May 1998
ISBN 084474039X
224 pages

More and more Americans are enrolling in health maintenance organizations, preferred provider organizations, and other managed-care programs. As managed care has expanded, its quality, cost-effectiveness, and restriction of individual choice have been increasingly called into question. This book analyzes the use of managed care by employers, the effects of managed care on health care providers, and the antitrust implications of the changing market structure.

Mr. Morrisey is a professor of health economics and the director of the Lister Hill Center for Health Policy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. This summary is drawn from his introduction to the volume.

Managed health care has grown remarkably in the past decade. As recently as 1985, only 7.5 percent of insured workers had coverage through a health maintenance organization (HMO). The term preferred provider organization (PPO) was just entering the vocabulary of health care professionals; a tally of the number of people eligible for such plans was not yet being considered. Employees of small firms almost never had coverage through a managed-care plan. By 1995 managed care had become the insurance mechanism of choice for private sector workers; 73 percent of workers in firms of all sizes were covered through a managed-care plan. The term PPO is now a common one, although point-of-service plan gives pause to the uninitiated. Virtually all states are experimenting with managed care in their Medicaid programs. Medicare reformers rely heavily on the concept.

Managed Trade: The Case against Import Targets
By Douglas A. Irwin
AEI Press February 1995
ISBN 0844738794
93 pages

This book is a study of the use of voluntary import expansions to correct trade imbalances, specifically imbalances between the United States and Japan. The author is an associate professor of business economics in the Graduate School of Business of the University of Chicago. A summary of the book follows.

Voluntary import expansions are poised to become the latest weapon in the arsenal of U.S. trade policies to "open" foreign markets that are considered closed because of alleged discriminatory practices and other hidden barriers to trade. VIEs have become the sine qua non of a results-oriented trade policy that focuses on specific, concrete outcomes rather than on what proponents dismiss as free trade principles that rely on ineffective rules.

VIEs mandate that a country import a specific quantity of foreign goods in a specific industry, usually by setting a minimum import market share and often backed by the threat of tariff retaliation. As such, VIEs are the import counterpart to voluntary export restraints, which set a quantitative ceiling on a country's exports of a given product to another country. Although VERs are generally considered harmful to the economic welfare of the importing country because of restricting trade, VIEs are more difficult to judge because their ostensible purpose is to expand trade in the face of alleged foreign trade barriers.

Managing Environmental Risk through Insurance
By Paul K. Freeman and Howard Kunreuther
Kluwer Academic Publishers1st edition (June 1997)
ISBN 0792399013
120 pages

This book analyzes the role that insurance can play in managing environmental risk. After contrasting insurance with other means society uses to address risk, the authors describe the comparative advantages of insurance. They then analyze the insurability of different environmental risks and apply their analysis to three concrete cases.

Paul K. Freeman is CEO and founder of ERIC Group, Inc., a company providing solutions to environmental risks. Howard Kunreuther is the Cecilia Yen Koo Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and codirector of the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center.

Managing Environmental Risk through Insurance begins with an examination of the three principal ways that our society manages risks, namely, through: (1) government benefit programs; (2) the legal system; and (3) private insurance. Each method of transferring risk has its own set of characteristics.

Medicare in the Twenty-first Century: Seeking Fair and Efficient Reform
Edited by Robert B. Helms
AEI Press 1st edition (December 1999)
ISBN 0844741183
179 pages

There is little disagreement among economists and policymakers that Medicare, the main federal health insurance program for the elderly and the disabled, cannot survive in its current form through the second decade of the twenty-first century. In this volume, many of the nation's finest health economists offer their recommendations for saving the program. The recommendations strive not only to improve the program's efficiency, but also to maintain fairness to the various constituencies involved.

Robert B. Helms is a resident scholar and the director of health policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Many Americans ignore the serious problems besetting the popular Medicare program. Although the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare (established by Congress as part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997) recently spent a year trying to reach consensus on a reform plan, Medicare restructuring is receiving relatively little attention from politicians and the press.

Moral Judgment: Does the Abuse Excuse Threaten Our Legal System?
By James Q. Wilson
Basic Books Reprint edition (April 1998)
ISBN 0465047335
128 pages

This book examines how the efforts of social science to understand and explain human conduct--and the introduction of those explanations in criminal trials through the increasing participation of "expert witnesses" and consideration of "mitigating circumstances"--have compromised the legal system's obligation to pronounce clear moral judgments on the conduct of individuals accused of criminal wrongdoing.

The author is James Collins Professor of Management and Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, and chairman of the Council of Academic Advisers of the American Enterprise Institute. Prof. Wilson's earlier books include The Moral Sense (1993), Crime and Human Nature (with Richard J. Herrnstein) (1985), and Thinking about Crime (1975).

Many Americans worry that the moral order that once held the nation together has come unraveled. Despite freedom and prosperity--or worse, perhaps because of freedom and prosperity--a crucial part of the moral order, a sense of personal responsibility, has withered under the attack of personal self-indulgence.

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