Globalization and Egalitarian Redistribution. Edited by Pranab Bardhan, Samuel Bowles, and Michael Wallerstein. Princeton: Russell Sage, 2006. 329p. $35.00

Despite their divergent overall verdicts, critics and supporters of economic globalization each typically affirm that a defensible global economic order would be one under which the living standards of less advantaged persons throughout the world were significantly higher than they currently are. The goal of Globalization and Egalitarian Redistribution is to provide detailed empirical assessment of the ways that economic globalization—understood as “the reduced impediments to the movement of goods, people, information, and finance across national boundaries” (p. 2)—can both enable and thwart the efforts of states to adopt “egalitarian” policies and institutional arrangements that aim to enhance the living standards of less advantaged persons, whether by redistributing income to them or by insuring them in various ways against economic risks.