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Balance: The Economics of Great Powers from Ancient Rome to Modern America Hardcover – 12 Sept. 2013
- ISBN-101476700257
- ISBN-13978-1476700250
- PublisherATRIA BOOKS
- Publication date12 Sept. 2013
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions16.51 x 2.54 x 23.5 cm
- Print length368 pages
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Product details
- Publisher : ATRIA BOOKS (12 Sept. 2013)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 368 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1476700257
- ISBN-13 : 978-1476700250
- Dimensions : 16.51 x 2.54 x 23.5 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 1,872,231 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 2,977 in History of Civilisation & Culture
- 5,126 in Economic Conditions (Books)
- 5,407 in Economic History (Books)
- Customer reviews:
About the authors

R. Glenn Hubbard was named dean of Columbia Business School on July 1, 2004. A Columbia faculty member since 1988, he is also the Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics. Professor Hubbard received his BA and BS degrees summa cum laude from the University of Central Florida, where he received the National Society of Professional Engineers Award. He also holds AM and PhD degrees in economics from Harvard University. After graduating from Harvard, Professor Hubbard began his teaching career at Northwestern University, moving to Columbia in 1988. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Business School, as well as the University of Chicago. Professor Hubbard also held the John M. Olin Fellowship at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
In addition to writing more than 100 scholarly articles in economics and finance, Professor Hubbard is the author of two leading textbooks on money and financial markets, as well as co-author of The Aid Trap: Hard Truths About Ending Poverty and Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Five Steps to a Better Health Care System. His commentaries appear frequently in Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Washington Post, Nikkei, and the Daily Yomiuri, as well as on television (on PBS's Nightly Business Report) and radio (on NPR's Marketplace).
In government, Professor Hubbard served as deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department for Tax Policy from 1991 to 1993. From February 2001 until March 2003, he was chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush. While serving as CEA chairman, he also chaired the Economic Policy Committee of the OECD. In the corporate sector, he is currently a director of ADP, BlackRock Closed-End Funds, KKR Financial Corporation, and Met Life.
Professor Hubbard is married to Constance Pond Hubbard. They live in Manhattan with their two sons.
If you'd like more information about The Aid Trap: Hard Truths About Ending Poverty, please visit http://aidtrap.com.
Recent media about the book can be found:
Forbes magazine piece about the book can be read here:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/1005/opinions-marshall-plan-africa-ideas-opinions.html
A video interview can be found on this website:
http://www.cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14562-6/the-aid-trap/webFeatures

Tim Kane is the J.P. Conte Research Fellow in Immigration Studies at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University where he specializes in economic growth, immigration, and national security.
After working for over a decade as a policy scholar, Kane ran in a special election for an open seat in the U.S. Congress in Ohio as a “pro-trade, pro-immigration” conservative in early 2018. Kane served twice as a senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress. He co-founded two software firms in the late 1990s. And he served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force with two tours of duty overseas.
Kane’s latest book is THE IMMIGRANT SUPERPOWER from Oxford University Press.
He also wrote Total Volunteer Force: Lessons from the US Military on Leadership Culture and Talent Management, which was published in July of 2017 by the Hoover Press. In 2013, he co-authored with Glenn Hubbard the book Balance: The Economics of Great Powers from Ancient Rome to Modern America. Balance has since been released as a trade paperback and translated into five languages. In 2012, Kane authored Bleeding Talent, about leadership in the US military.
Dozens of media outlets have cited Dr. Kane’s research, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. He has provided commentary for ABC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX News, NPR, and Bloomberg TV.
Kane earned a PhD in economics from UC San Diego. He is also a graduate of the US Air Force Academy. \
http://www.facebook.com/timmerkane
https://twitter.com/TimmerKane

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I'm genuinely tempted to say "nothing" but it's not entirely true.
I've learnt that Diocletian formalised guilds in Rome. In school we were all taught how horrible he'd been to Christians, but I now know we additionally have him to thank for the 28 "closed professions" Mario Monti lost his mandate trying to pry open. Cool info.
But I was surprised that the book could not make the connection between Rome and the Ottoman Empire. I mean what was great about both was common (respect for the achievements / tolerance for the culture and religion of their subjects) and what was bad about both was common (the fact that praetorians / janissaries etc. ended up running the empires for themselves a lot of the time). That's before you consider that one was built on the ashes of the other.
And, in general, the book took me through a whirlwind tour of Rome, China, Spain, Turkey, Japan, the EU, California and the US and then did not really do much in terms of putting the pieces together.
There was no oooomph. No passion. No over-riding theme. Too much, er, Balance. Then again, that's what it says on the cover.
Regardless, there are enough fun ideas in the book that one should not reject it. Like, for example, that the British empire did not die of overstretch. Rather, it failed to assimilate the US. Giving British citizenship to American subjects would indeed have been quite a coup. Even if it's the wrong idea, it's an intriguing concept.
Another idea I like was that the state-sponsored catchup with true capitalism can look for a long time like it's outperforming the real thing (like people say it's doing in China at the moment), but ultimately it does hit the stops. Not that any solid proof is provided in the book, but I like my prejudices to be reinforced.
Another idea I like that is that special interest groups are nothing new in America. And therefore, much as we don't like them, they can't be blamed for recent decline, if there is any. So the latest piece of legislation that lets Sheldon Adelson start his own PAC might be distasteful, but less so than not letting him.
Based on that fact, the authors have a stab at explaining ideological polarisation in US politics, blaming it (quite convincingly, from my angle) on changes in party finance laws back in the early seventies, that made it impossible for funds to go to anybody but the two parties (rather than say the candidates themselves or independents)
Then the conclusions appear. They are dreadfully Balanced.