What the Future Holds: Insights from Social Science

Front Cover
Richard N. Cooper, Richard Layard
MIT Press, 2003 - 285 pages

Social scientists from various disciplines discuss and offer predictions about the future.

Predicting the future is notoriously difficult. But systematic analysis leads to clearer understanding and wiser decisions. Thinking about the future also makes social scientists focus their research into the past and present more fruitfully, with more attention to key predictors of change.

This book considers how we might think intelligently about the future. Taking different methodological approaches, well-known specialists forecast likely future developments and trends in human life. The questions they address include: How many humans will there be? Will there be enough energy? How will climate change affect our lives? What patterns of work will exist? How will government work at the local, national, and world level? Will inflation remain under control? Why have past forecasts been so bad? The book concludes with a discussion of the intellectual and historical context of futurology and a look at the accuracy of predictions that were made for the year 2000. Jed.

From inside the book

 

Contents

Introduction
1
History Innovation and
17
The Future of Energy from the Perspective of the Social
77
Modeling Climate Change Impacts and Their Related
123
The World of Work in the New Millennium
157
Threats to Future Effectiveness of Monetary Policy
179
The Architecture of Government in the TwentyFirst
209
Western Future Studies of the 1960s
233
Contributors
261
Copyright

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What the Future Holds: Insights from Social Science
Richard N. Cooper,Richard Layard
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References to this book

About the author (2003)

Richard N. Cooper is Maurits C. Boas Professor of International Economics at Harvard University. Richard Layard is Director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics.

Bibliographic information

TitleWhat the Future Holds: Insights from Social Science
Business book summary
Mit Press
EditorsRichard N. Cooper, Richard Layard
Editionillustrated, reprint, revised
PublisherMIT Press, 2003
ISBN0262532042, 9780262532044
Length285 pages
  
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