Abstract
The purpose of economic activity is to increase the well-being of individuals, and employment is central to that well-being. Both propositions seem obvious. Yet economic policies often go against workers' interests. The explanation, Stiglitz argues, lies in the commodification of labour in neoclassical economics, compounded by pervasive market failures, the political under-representation of labour and widespread advocacy of "market-friendly" policies that assume efficiency issues can be addressed in isolation from equity and distributional issues. Governments - and, in a broader sense, the international community - have a key role to play in ensuring that development means more than the accumulation of capital.