and the USA, the only intellectual tradition thatimpresses itself on Folbre’s register, over aspan of four centuries, is the French. Apartfrom Marx and Engels, Germany achieves asolitary mention in the forlorn figure of AugustBebel. Except for a passing reference to Lenin,the rest of Europe draws a blank. This egre-gious parochialism leads to egregious silencesat two important levels. Folbre’s silence overGermany pre-empts a discussion of early cri-tiques of free trade and the development of thetheory and practice of protectionism, with itsassociated, germinal, justifications for affirma-tive action. Her neglect of the Russian traditionprevents the presentation of feminist ideas inRussian anarchist thought. It also erases themajor theoretical contributions to socialist fem-inism that came out of the Bolshevik circle, thecriticisms these contributions offered of liberalbourgeois feminisms, and the practical successof different Soviet policies to reduce genderinequality much before such reduction becamean important policy goal in the USA, UK orFrance. To each one’s private pantheon. None-theless, when Alexandra Kollontai fails to fig-ure even as a footnote in a history of feministthought that devotes considerable space to theMarquis de Sade, one cannot help feelingdubious about the author’s sense of intellectualproportion.

INDRANEEL DASGUPTA

Centre for Studies in Social Sciences,Calcutta, India

The New Zealand Economy: An Introduction, byR. Lattimore and S. Eaqub (Auckland Univer-sity Press, Auckland, 2011), pp. xi + 170.

This short book (LE henceforth) sets itselftwo goals, aiming to be an ‘introductory text’on the NZ economy for school and universitystudents and a ‘pocket guide’ to the NZ econ-omy for others. The second goal is a hard one toachieve, as this sort of book dates very quickly(already, for instance, its expectation that theRBNZ would ‘raise interest rates from early2012’ (p. 139) seems unlikely, as the Bank notonly held its OCR at 2.5 per cent in late Januarybut dropped its earlier mutterings about holdingrates ‘for now’). But the first goal is certainlymet, and I am sure this book will be a success-

ful follow-up to its forerunner, The New Zea-land Macroeconomy, by Dalziel and Lattimore.It is well-written and the authors have made anobvious and successful effort to be succinct,whilst still being readable, so that the book isboth easily and quickly digested.

The book is relatively comprehensive in itscoverage, in light of its target student audience,with chapters focusing on global issues, capitalmarkets, monetary policy, fiscal policy, labourmarkets and even macro forecasting. It alsoincludes two short guest essays on innovationand economic geography. But it is not clearwhy the name has changed from its earlierDalziel and Lattimore incarnation. The mainfocus in LE is still very much on the macro-economy, with even microeconomic topicsbeing discussed largely in light of their macroramifications.

I learned a few things from this book. Thebrief discussion of retail deposit guarantees inthe NZ banking system (pp. 106–7) was interest-ing, albeit too terse, as was the discussion ofgovernment debt and projections for it. But Ihad two main reservations in my reading. Thefirst is that the book seems unsure of whatknowledge to assume of its student reader. ‘Thedecline in GDP from 1978 to 1979 is called arecession’ we’re told on p. 3, an instruction thatis at once both unnecessary (surely high schoolstudents have come across the notion of a‘recession’ before) and inadequate: no furtherdiscussion ensues on what constitutes a reces-sion to an economist (two consecutive quartersof non-positive growth, as I recall my macro).At another point the authors note that a topicthey are discussing is ‘available in introductorytextbooks’ (p. 10), as if this is an explanationfor its terse coverage in LE. But a great deal ofwhat they cover is available in introductorytextbooks, so this is not a very useful criterionfor evaluating what needs to be explained here.A high school student who didn’t know what arecession was would have a great deal of troublereading this book and would need to keep thatintroductory textbook pretty handy, rather under-mining LE’s function.

My second concern is perhaps not some-thing that will worry the primary audience, but,reading this as someone in the second categorylooking for a pocket guide to the NZ economy, Iwas struck by how little stress is placed on NZ’sdifference from other countries. Not so much interms of the numbers – the importance of

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agriculture in NZ GDP is contrasted with othersand suchlike – but more in terms of policy. Weare told that NZ levies no capital gains taxes,but no discussion ensues of the wisdom (orotherwise) of this or of proposals to reform NZtaxation; the uniqueness of the NZ AccidentCompensation system is not raised; the activitiesof the NZ Commerce Commission are discussedbriefly (pp. 60–1), but nothing is made of theintense debate on light-handed versus moreexplicit sectoral regulation and the evolution ofregulation in NZ (other than one sentence onp.61); even NZ’s innovative central bank legis-lation, whilst being discussed, is not highlightedat all. I suspect that the student reading thisbook would not come away with much sense ofany major policy innovations or even much ofthe current policy debate in NZ; more signifi-cantly, they might come away with the view thata lot of NZ policy choices are ‘normal’ and tobe expected elsewhere in the world. There areexceptions to this, for instance in the discussionof the broad base of the GST, but they are tooinfrequent for my liking.

There are some other minor matters in thebook with which one might take issue. Thedefinition of comparative advantage in terms ofrelative export quantities (pp. 40–1) rather thanprices sticks out, as it is susceptible to changesin policy measures and it’s not clear that that isparticularly desirable; certainly the studentreader will be confused when they then look itup in their introductory textbook. I would alsohave liked to see a more explicit anti-mercan-tilism message in discussing why countriestrade. The authors refrain from editorialisingmuch – this book is designed as a pocketguide, not a polemic – but I think a little relax-ation of this guideline might have helped insome areas. And I fear that the rearguardcampaign to maintain ‘data’ as plural might bedoomed: When a writer as accomplished asRalph Lattimore refers to ‘that data’, one’sinner stickler despairs. Last, and very muchleast, the book suggests (p. 50) that Weet-Bixwas developed in NZ, but I understand that,unlike Clarrie Grimmett, pavlova and FredHollows, this particular Aussie icon is, in fact,Australian!

MARTIN RICHARDSON

Research School of Economics,The Australian National University

Changing Fortunes: Income Mobility and PovertyDynamics in Britain, by Stephen Jenkins(Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2011),pp. 432.

In Jenkins’ words, Changing Fortunes ‘is pri-marily a book about the measurement anddescription of Britain’s income distribution froma longitudinal perspective’. Whilst internation-ally there now exist many household panel data-sets, facilitating countless diverse longitudinalanalyses, this appears to be the first bookentirely devoted to the income dynamics of asingle country, using a single data set: the Brit-ish Household Panel Survey. (Comparisons aremade to published results for other countries,but these are not systematic and are affected bycomparability issues.) It goes without sayingthat the overriding impression is of a book thatis very focused and deep, but not very broad.Given the care devoted by its highly creden-tialed author, I think this book will be regardedas an authoritative account of its topic, but atthe same time may not draw a wide readership.It will primarily be of interest to those inter-ested in a thorough introduction to the subtletiesof researching income dynamics or those with aserious interest in British income dynamics.

The book is well structured with 12 chapterscontained in three cohesive parts plus a reflec-tive ‘Summary and Conclusion’ chapter. Mostchapters include a concluding summary.

Much attention is devoted to discussing thesubtleties of the field, including conceptualissues, definitions and data, always making limi-tations and caveats explicit. Almost 90 pagesare devoted to measurement and data alone (thisconstitutes Part I).

Part II is concerned with income mobility: Itdiscusses the various perspectives on analysingmobility (specifically positional change, individ-ual income growth, current versus permanentincome inequality and income risk). It docu-ments substantial but small longitudinal short-term income flux, which leaves much inequalityin permanent income. There is also little evi-dence that the extent of mobility has changedbetween the early 1990s and mid-2000s,although this masks increases in the variabilityof some income sources, offset by decreases inothers. Chapter 7 shows considerable heteroge-neity in individual wage and income trajectories.

Part III is on income poverty dynamics.Persistent poverty rates are shown to be much

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