Despite the past century’s extraordinary advances in technology and scientific knowledge, today’s world is still racked by economic insecurity vast gulfs between rich and poor violent conflicts and daunting environmental problems.

What’s stopping us from building a world in which there’s less inequality and more nurturing of the individual’s potential to lead a satisfying life? Does the central role of self-interest in human nature necessitate economic arrangements that condemn us to living on a treadmill of consumerism and insecurity? Will the gap between rich and poor countries ever be bridged? These are the key questions that Brown University economist Louis Putterman’s The Good, the Bad, and the Economy addresses in surprising new ways.

“…[D]istinguished economist Louis Putterman combines clear writing delicious anecdotes and masses of evidence to answer [the] biggest questions facing our world.”--Jared Diamond Professor of Geography UCLA Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of Guns Germs and Steel and Collapse

“The Good, The Bad, and The Economy is a case of the right question by the right author. Read it.”--Samuel Bowles Santa Fe Institute co-author of A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and its Evolution

“Some of the most interesting but puzzling questions facing us today have been addressed in this excellent and accessible book. I strongly recommend this book.”--Elinor Ostrom School of Human Evolution & Social Change Arizona State University and Indiana University Co-winner of the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science.

“Louis Putterman offers an excellent well-written justification for an economics that takes the basic needs of our species into account.”--Frans de Waal Professor of Primate Behavior Emory University author of The Age of Empathy and Our Inner Ape.