There are many “outsiders” who have written critiques of the global financial system. Insiders typically do not; they have too much to lose. What makes Stiglitz's book, Globalization and Its Discontents, unusual is that it is an insider's critique. This book sketches the unfairness of the global system and how institutions, like the IMF, perpetuate the asymmetries of power and wealth. Though the book provides a morally compelling account of recent global crises, and its plea that we must think about radical change is hard to dismiss, it does not break new analytical ground nor offer concrete suggestions of alternatives.

There are many outsiders who have written critiques of the global financial system. Insiders typically do not; they have too much to lose. What makes Stiglitz's book, Globalization and Its Discontents, unusual is that it is an insider's critique. This book sketches the unfairness of the global system and how institutions, like the IMF, perpetuate the asymmetries of power and wealth. Though the book provides a morally compelling account of recent global crises, and its plea that we must think about radical change is hard to dismiss, it does not break new analytical ground nor offer concrete suggestions of alternatives. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

It has been known that, in aggregating infinite utility streams, there does not exist any social welfare function, which satisfies the axioms of Pareto, intergenerational equity, and continuity. We show that the impossibility result persists even without imposing the continuity axiom, and in frameworks allowing for more general domains of utilities than those used in the existing literature.