James Yunker’s Global Marshall Plan: Theory and Evidence is an important book because the world urgently needs new ideas. The original Marshall Plan worked wonders in Europe after World War II. Although the global situation is different in many respects from the situation back then, a Global Marshall Plan is perhaps our best option for coping with global economic inequality, a problem which the world community has thus far failed to address effectively. Based on a rigorous theoretical and empirical analysis, Yunker makes a convincing case for trying out that option.

F.J. Radermacher, University of Ulm, Germany

The scale of world inequality—within, across, and between nations, genders, and other social groups—is staggering. Unchecked, its onward march harbors the kind of social and political instability few have yet to comprehend. Yet, in much the same way we have done when it comes to tackling the other great ills of our time—war, environmental catastrophe, human insecurity, health pandemics, among others—we have eschewed serious, imaginative, and innovative thinking about how to improve, in more than a marginal way, the lived experiences of much of the world’s population. That we can no longer sit on our hands while Rome proverbially burns has been made clear by many. James Yunker is one of the very few brave enough to take world changing ideas seriously, explore their potential, examine their application, and show their capacity to make a dramatic difference to the world in which we live. Brave, passionate, compelling, Yunker’s Global Marshall Plan: Theory and Evidence is essential reading for all.

Rorden Wilkinson, University of Sussex, University of Manchester