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Richard Pomfret, ‘The Age of Equality’ The 20th century as a contest of economic systems

The 19th and 20th centuries were some of the most momentous periods of change in human history. The former saw the immense economic power of capitalism and the industrial revolution create levels of unheard-of wealth. The latter saw a battle over how to spread that wealth, with opposing models of the communist command economy facing off against a liberal capitalism tempered by the rise of the welfare state. For Robert Menzies the state had an important ameliorative role to play in society, but he knew that all prosperity and innovation were ultimately driven by individual initiative and enterprise. While this model seemed to have triumphed by the end of the 20th century, it faces new and significant challenges, and that is why it is worth looking back on the big picture of humanity’s recent past.

In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Professor Richard Pomfret about the central themes of his book, The Age of Equality: The twentieth century in economic perspective.

Dr. Richard Pomfret has been Professor of Economics at the University of Adelaide since 1992. Before coming to Adelaide, he was Professor of Economics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC, Bologna (Italy) and Nanjing (China). He previously worked at Concordia University in Montréal and the Institut für Weltwirtschaft at the University of Kiel in Germany. Pomfret has acted as adviser to the Australian government and to international organisations such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and United Nations Development Programme. In 1993 he was seconded to the United Nations for a year, acting as adviser on macroeconomic policy to the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. He has written seventeen books, including Investing in China 1979-1989; Ten Years of the Open Door Policy (1991), The Economics of Regional Trading Arrangements (1997; paperback edition 2001), Constructing a Market Economy: Diverse Paths from Central Planning in Asia and Europe (2002), The Central Asian Economies since Independence (2006), Regionalism in East Asia (2011), The Age of Equality: The twentieth century in economic perspective, published by Harvard University Press (2011) and Trade Facilitation, co-authored with Patricia Sourdin and published by Edward Elgar (2012).