lled “the dismal science”. Two of these problems are at the core of this volume. One is the huge extent of global poverty: Three billion poor people are nearly half of humanity. The second challenge highlighted in this book is the global employment (not: unemployment) problem. Although there are 200 million people in the world who are unemployed using standard international definitions, a much larger number – 900 million – are working poor. Gary S. Fields tries to answer two “big questions”: Who benefits from economic growth, and who is hurt by economic decline? How do developing countries’ labor markets work? The IZA Prize Laureate summarizes the empirical knowledge that is most relevant to understanding these questions; he shows how to bring together what we know into realistic, yet parsimonious, theoretical models of what is happening; he specifies the policy evaluation criteria to be used in assessing the effects of actual or prospective policy interventions; and he brings together empirical knowledge, theoretical models, and policy evaluation criteria to reach welfare economic judgments about what should or should not be done.(Publisher)