Managing the World Economy , while recognizing how much has been achieved since the start of the Industrial Revolution, challenges the view that much better results could have been attained. It argues that faster economic growth and much better use of the available human talent could have been in the past, and should be in the future, achievable targets. The reasons for the performance of the world economy over the last two hundred years being well below the achievable optimum stem mainly from misconceptions about macroeconomic policy, which the book sets out to explain and correct.