The true cost of the Iraq War is $3 trillion rather than the $50 billion projected by the White House. Apart from its tragic human toll, the Iraq War will be staggeringly expensive in financial terms. This sobering study by Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda J. Bilmes casts a spotlight on expense items that have been hidden from the U.S. taxpayer, including not only big-ticket items like replacing military equipment (being used up at six times the peacetime rate) but also the cost of caring for thousands of wounded veterans for the rest of their lives. Shifting to a global focus, the authors investigate the cost in lives and economic damage within Iraq and the region. Finally, with the chilling precision of an actuary, the authors measure what the U.S. taxpayer's money would have produced if instead it had been invested in the further growth of the U.S. economy. Written in language as simple as the details are disturbing, this book will forever change the way we think about the war.

Since the Great Depression the legitimacy of the state has become closely linked to its economic performance. Recently, public choice, monetarism and the New Classical macroeconomics have all questioned the efficiency and desirability of State intervention in the economy. This book, founded on an essay by Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz aims to provide an insight into the positive and normative aspects of the evolving role of the State. Professor Stiglitz's essay is taken up and discussed by a group of economists who address the crucial question of whether there can be an optimum with respect to the size and character of the public sector.