Reciprocity is the basis of social relations. It permits a peaceful and free society in which people and rights are respected. The essence of families and communities, it also enables the working of markets and organizations, while correcting their main failures. Reciprocity is also a basis of politics, and it justifies social policies. Although the importance of reciprocity has been widely recognized in other social sciences, it has, until recently, been somewhat ignored in economic analysis. Over the past three decades, economic theorist and moral philosopher Serge-Christophe Kolm has been...

Reform of the welfare sector is an important yet difficult challenge for countries in transition from socialist central planning to market-oriented democracies. Here a scholar of the economics of socialism and post-socialist transition, and a health economist take on this challenge. They offer health sector reform recommendations for ten countries of Eastern Europe, drawn from nine guiding principles. The authors conclude that policymakers need to achieve a balance, both assuring social solidarity through universal access to basic health services and expanding individual choice and...

An economic policy always relies on diagnosis about spontaneous trends and about the likely impact of alternative government decisions. Unemployment was the main problem faced by policy makers during the past two decades. During that period the author devoted most of his time either to observation and diagnosis or to the analysis of macroeconomic factors of unemployment. This book presents what was learned from this experience, particularly on diagnosing unemployment trends and assessing the effects of real wages on investment and employment.

Robert Solow is widely regarded as one of the greatest living economists. He has conducted path-breaking work in both microeconomics and macroeconomics, is the best-selling author of numerous publications, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economic Science in 1987. In Monopolistic Competition and Macroeconomic Theory, Professor Solow gives a nontechnical account of the implications of monopolistic competition on macroeconomic theory and shows that simple and tractable micro-based models can offer the possibility of a richer and more intuitive macroeconomics.