New Wealth for Old Nations provides a guide to policy priorities in small or regional economies for policymakers, students, and scholars seeking avenues to improved growth, greater opportunity, and better governance. Here, the research insights of some of the world's leading economists combine with the practicalities of implementing structural reforms, with Scotland as the ideal case study: the recent devolution of government in the United Kingdom offers a natural experiment in political economy, one whose lessons apply to almost any small, advanced economy. One fundamental conclusion is that policy can make a big difference to long-term prosperity wherever factor mobility is high. Indeed the difficulty in introducing growth-oriented policies lies more in the politics of implementing change than in the theoretical diagnosis. Public sector governance is consequently a key issue in creating a pro-growth consensus. And faster growth must be seen to improve opportunities for the population as a whole. Further, setting out the evidence - as this book does for Scotland - is vital to overcoming entrenched institutional barriers to policy reform.
The first chapter is by Jo Armstrong, John McLaren, and the editors; and the subsequent chapters are by Paul Krugman, William Baumol, Edward Glaeser, Paul Hallwood and Ronald MacDonald, James Heckman and Dimitriy Masterov, Heather Joshi and Robert Wright, Nicholas Crafts, and John Bradley.