Creating a Learning Society

A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress

By: Joseph E. Stiglitz

Narrated by: Sean Runnette

It has long been recognized that most standard of living increases are associated with advances in technology, not the accumulation of capital. Yet it has also become clear that what truly separates developed from less developed countries is not just a gap in resources or output but a gap in knowledge. In fact the pace at which developing countries grow is largely determined by the pace at which they close that gap. Therefore, how countries learn and become more productive is key to understanding how they grow and develop, especially over the long term.

In Creating a Learning Society, Joseph E. Stiglitz and Bruce C. Greenwald spell out the implications of this insight for both economic theory and policy. Taking as a starting point Kenneth J. Arrow's 1962 paper "Learning by Doing", they explain why the production of knowledge differs from that of other goods and why market economies alone are typically not efficient in the production and transmission of knowledge. Closing knowledge gaps, or helping laggards learn, is central to growth and development.

Combining technical economic analysis with accessible prose, Stiglitz and Greenwald provide new models of "endogenous growth", upending the received thinking about global policy and trade regimes. They show how well-designed government trade and industrial policies can help create a learning society; explain how poorly designed intellectual property regimes can retard learning; demonstrate how virtually every government policy has effects, both positive and negative, on learning; and argue that policymakers need to be cognizant of these effects. They provocatively show why many standard policy prescriptions, especially associated with "neoliberal" doctrines focusing on static resource allocations, impede learning and explain why free trade may lead to stagnation while broad-based industrial protection and exchange rate interventions may bring benefits, not just to the industrial sector but to the entire economy.

The volume concludes with brief commentaries from Philippe Aghion and Michael Woodford as well as from Nobel Laureates Kenneth Arrow and Robert Solow.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2015 Columbia university Press (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

Eye opening book!

This is an awesome book, beautifully performed. the quality of the content makes you think a lot.

Excelent!!!

Make sure to listen to it, Stiglitz has a gift to explain in da most easy way complex topics plus his view on development is what everybody needs to learn about to build a better world

tecnico pero vale la pena

aunque es un libro muy tecnico y de carácter científico. vale la pena leerlo para entender hacia donde apuntar en el desarrollo y crecimiento de las naciones.

Very enlightening

If you are interested in economics or just want to improve society this is a great book. I'm looking forward to the day these ideas are implemented in America

Interesting

I found the book interesting. But some concepts are hard to grasp first time. Maybe this is the type of book that should be read first, and listened to afterwords for revision purposes.

Seems Like Armchair Theorizing by an Elitist

And though it is a clueless perspective (meaning ultimately suicidal, which is why it will be ignored), it is one of the healthier clueless perspectives (and humanity has generated nothing but 'clueless' so far). Compared this to the new Philosophy of Broader Survival (which addresses such cluelessness). The narration was dry and hard to stay with. That said, I'll listen again since it was elevated thinking professionally done. Curious that I just listened to a book arguing against top-down meddling, and this book argues for it (the real answer is Philosophical Enlightenment, which neither realized, not having thought things through to that level). As it turns out, the former book argued for Capitalism and this book argued for Socialism (both short-sighted, since Socialism breeds a lack of initiative, parasitism, and elitism (all clueless, and an elitism that you might expect from lazy armchair theorizing, especially from England, where they cling to their romanticized glory days of global and social elitism), and Capitalism driven by Greed (rather than need), which ultimately destroys everything that it comes into contact with, even the greedy.