Description: One of the most important functions of government--risk management--is one of the least well understood. Moving beyond familiar public functions--spending, taxation, and regulation--Moss spotlights government's pivotal role as a risk manager, revealing the nature and extent of this function, which touches almost every aspect of economic life.
Brief description: David A. Moss is the Paul Whiton Cherington Professor at Harvard Business School and the founder of the Tobin Project, a nonprofit research organization that has received the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. He has received the Student Association Faculty Award for outstanding teaching at the Harvard Business School eight times. Democracy: A Case Study grew out of a course he created for Harvard undergraduates and business school students that has been taught to the United States Congress and to state congresses and that is now being brought to high schools throughout America as part of the High School Case Method Project, which Professor Moss oversees at Harvard Business School.
Review Quotes: David Moss...offers a novel perspective on the extraordinary expansion of government. Where once it confined its remit to the bare essentials of defence, internal security and the enforcement of private-property rights, today's leviathan spreads into every corner of national life, not just by taxing and spending but also by regulating. Much of the growth, Mr. Moss argues, has come from the state's unique ability to reallocate risk. Government has expanded its reach because it is the ultimate risk manager... [An] enlightening book.-- "The Economist" (5/11/2002 12:00:00 AM)