The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (Grove Art)

by Paul Collier

Changing our laws and promulgating international charters are global public goods. This is a grandiose way of saying that providing them is going to be problematic. Global public goods are grossly undersupplied because nobody has much interest in providing them. Being good for everybody, they face the ultimate free-rider problem. The real problem, therefore, is not that of not knowing what to do but getting around to doing it.