Creating a Learning Society
A New Approach to Growth, Development and Social Progress
Editorial Review
Creating a Learning Society explains how the countries of the world went from centuries of stagnation to the enormous increases in standards of living that have marked the last two hundred and fifty years: they have learned how to learn. Yet, as Stiglitz and Greenwald make clear, markets won't succeed on their own in creating the learning society that we need. Achieving this requires good governmental policy in a variety of areas, including trade, industry, and intellectual property. Indeed, the central thesis of this book is that every policy--tax, regulation, and expenditure--affects learning, and that policymakers have been remiss in ignoring this. Some policies, such as the Washington Consensus policies foisted on developing countries by the World Bank and IMF, actually impede learning. In advanced and developing countries alike, Creating a Learning Society has had a remarkable reception. Governments in Malaysia, Singapore, Turkey, Jordan, and South Africa have signaled strong support for its policies, and a Dutch think tank closely allied with the government released a blueprint for creating a learning economy. This streamlined edition, intended for everyone from scholars to general readers, omits the original book's complicated mathematical equations and, in accessible language, focuses on its central messages and policy prescriptions.
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Wisdom to Share
The exchange rate reflects the competitiveness of the economy-the ability of exporters to export and of import-competing firms to compete with import.
To sum up, knowledge is a free good. The biggest cost in its transmission is not in the production or distribution of knowledge, but in its assimilation.
One of the advantages of trade is that it facilitates the spreading of information of technological knowledge.
Rules and procedures often hinder change, and change makes the implementation of rules and procedures more difficult, for they have to be constantly adapted to changing circumstances.
In a modern economy, the successful introduction of an innovation entails more than just satisfying a market test.
In a world with little change, there are few catalysts to learning, and little effort is spent on creating change to adapt to it.
In a world with little change, there are few catalysts to learning, and little effort is spent on creating change to adapt to it.
opening up to the rest of the world catalyzes learning and provides contacts from whom one can learn.
Successful exporters have to learn what it is that customers want; they have to learn about what competitors are supplying, and figure out how to outperform.
Workers move from firm to firm and thus convey some of the learning that has occurred in one firm to those in others.
Technological knowledge is embodied in machines, and a machine constructed for one purpose can often be adapted for quite another.
There are several empirical arguments that can be brought to bear to support our conclusion concerning the importance of learning.
learning touches every aspect of a modern dynamic economy and even more so of an emerging market struggling to become an advanced industrial country.
the private sector typically produces too little of goods that gives rise to positive externalities.
There is not a single breakthrough that led to enhanced learning capacities, but rather a series of organizational innovation.
Ideas have to be disseminated and put into practice: much of the increase in productivity occurs as firms learn from each other or as technology improves through practice.
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