The dominant approach to economic policy has so far failed to adequately address the pressing challenges the world faces today: extreme poverty, widespread joblessness and precarious employment, burgeoning inequality, and large-scale environmental threats. This message was brought home forcibly by the 2008 global economic crisis. Rethinking Economic Policy for Social Justice shows how human rights have the potential to transform economic thinking and policy-making with far-reaching consequences for social justice. The authors make the case for a new normative and analytical framework, based on a broader range of objectives which have the potential to increase the substantive freedoms and choices people enjoy in the course of their lives and not on not upon narrow goals such as the growth of gross domestic product. The book covers a range of issues including inequality, fiscal and monetary policy, international development assistance, financial markets, globalization, and economic instability. This new approach allows for a complex interaction between individual rights, collective rights and collective action, as well as encompassing a legal framework which offers formal mechanisms through which unjust policy can be protested. This highly original and accessible book will be essential reading for human rights advocates, economists, policy-makers and those working on questions of social justice.

"Anne O. Krueger has assembled and deftly summarized an excellent set of papers on the major issues in economic reform in developing countries at the turn of the century."--Stanley Fischer, International Monetary Fund The papers and commentary collected in this volume discuss vital contemporary thinking on economic policy reform--in particular, the difficulties that leave so much of the world mired in poverty. Distinguished contributors address issues ranging from education and privatization to exchange rates and telecommunications reform, providing an excellent overview of the current situation and the possible paths into the future.

This interdisciplinary volume examines the potential of human rights to challenge economic inequalities and their adverse impacts on human wellbeing.

Bsrd A. Andreassen is Professor at the Norwegian Center for Human Rights and Director of Research (human rights and development) at the Law Faculty, University of Oslo. --

Reforms and Economic Transformation in India is the second volume in the series Studies in Indian Economic Policies. The first volume, India's Reforms: How They Produced Inclusive Growth (OUP, 2012), systematically demonstrated that reforms-led growth in India led to reduced poverty among all social groups. They also led to shifts in attitudes whereby citizens overwhelmingly acknowledge the benefits that accelerated growth has brought them and as voters, they now reward the governments that deliver superior economic outcomes and punish those that fail to do so. This latest volume takes as its starting point the fact that while reforms have undoubtedly delivered in terms of poverty reduction and associated social objectives, the impact has not been as substantial as seen in other reform-oriented economies such as South Korea and Taiwan in the 1960s and 1970s, and more recently, in China. The overarching hypothesis of the volume is that the smaller reduction in poverty has been the result of slower transformation of the economy from a primarily agrarian to a modern, industrial one. Even as the GDP share of agriculture has seen rapid decline, its employment share has declined very gradually. More than half of the workforce in India still remains in agriculture. In addition, non-farm workers are overwhelmingly in the informal sector. Against this background, the nine original essays by eminent economists pursue three broad themes using firm level data in both industry and services. The papers in part I ask why the transformation in India has been slow in terms of the movement of workers out of agriculture, into industry and services, and from informal to formal employment. They address what India needs to do to speed up this transformation. They specifically show that severe labor-market distortions and policy bias against large firms has been a key factor behind the slow transformation. The papers in part II analyze the transformation that reforms have brought about within and across enterprises. For example, they investigate the impact of privatization on enterprise profitability. Part III addresses the manner in which the reforms have helped promote social transformation. Here the papers analyze the impact the reforms have had on the fortunes of the socially disadvantaged groups in terms of wage and education outcomes and as entrepreneurs.

This book deals with the complex and challenging relationship between economic policy and human rights. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, the need to address the conceptual and methodological (dis)connects between these two areas is more pressing than ever. Inspired by the 2019 United Nations Guiding Principles on Human Rights Impact Assessments (HRIA) for Economic Reform Policies, this book brings together experts working on human rights and economic policy from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including economics, law, and development studies. The contributions reflect a huge body of professional experience in the academic, policy-making, advocacy, and practitioner fields. They cover issues including the politics of evidence in the context of HRIA, economic inequality, child rights impact assessment of economic reforms, economic policy and women’s human rights, tax regimes for multinational corporations and human rights, as well as the human rights impacts of the economic fall-out of the COVID-19 pandemic. The collection also includes the text of the Guiding Principles themselves. It constitutes a crucial volume for scholars, policymakers, advocates and others working on the burning topic of human rights and economic policy reform. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of Human Rights.

Global human suffering in the twenty-first century seems bitterly entrenched, with almost half of the world's people remaining impoverished and over 26,000 children dying daily from preventable causes. This powerful and empowering text offers a way forward, presenting a realistic roadmap for enhanced benevolent global governance with practical, workable solutions to mass poverty. Now fully updated, including new chapters, The Global New Deal outlines the legal responsibilities for all institutions, organizations, and states under international law to respect, protect, and fulfill economic and social human rights. William F. Felice focuses on seven key areas: the dynamics within international political economy that contribute to economic inequality and create human suffering, the U.N.'s approach to economic and social human rights, the priority of ecosystem protection within all development strategies, the degree of racial bias prevalent in global economics, the relationship between gender equality and economic growth, the impact of military spending on human development, and the importance for the United States to adopt a human-rights approach to poverty alleviation. Arguing for a "global new deal," a set of international and national public policy proposals designed to protect the vulnerable and end needless suffering, this book provides a viable direction for structural reform to protect those left behind by the global economy.