With contributions from international scholars, this second volume by Joseph Stiglitz and Martin Guzman comprises of theoretical, empirical, and policy-based chapters which carefully utilize theory and data analysis.

Part I focuses on the issues of global inequality, poverty measurement and security. Part II turns to the issue of income contingent loans (ICL), where the repayment in any year depends on the annual income of the individual. These loans have proven to be an especially effective way of financing higher education, but there has been experimentation of the use of these loans in several other areas.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University. A recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979), he is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank, and a former member and chairman of the (US president's) Council of Economic Advisers. In 2000, Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, a think tank on international development based at Columbia University, USA.

Martin Guzman is a postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University Business School, USA, and Associate Professor at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is also a member of the INET Taskforce on Macroeconomic Externalities and a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Foreword
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Part I: Inequality, Poverty, and Security
1. The UTIP Global Inequality Data Sets 1963-2008. Updates, Revisions and Quality Checks; James K. Galbraith, Beatrice Halbach, Aleksandra Malinowska, Amin Shams and Wenjie Zhang
2. Multidimensional Poverty Measurement: The Mexican Wave; Gonzalo Hernández Licona
3. Inequality, Economic Growth and Natural Ressources Rent: Evidence From The Middle East and North Africa; Hamid E. Ali and Sara M. Sami
4. Inequality Impacts of Oil Dependence in the Mena; Sevil Acar 
5. Housing and Saving in Retirement Across Countries; Makoto Nakajima and Irina A. Telyukova
Part II: Income Contingent and Student Loans
6. Income Contingent Loans; Joseph E. Stiglitz
7. Income Contingent Loans as a General Risk Management Instrument; Bruce Chapman
8. Utilising the Transactional Efficiencies of Contingent Loans - A General Framework for Policy Application; Richard Denniss
9. Income Contingent Loans for Social Policy: the Case of Paid Parental Leave; Timothy Higgins
10. Illustrating Trade-Off Between Interest Rates and Aggregate Loan Recovery of the Student Loans Fund in Thailand; Kiatanantha Lounkaew
11. The Financial Capacity of German University Graduates to Repay Student Loans; Mathias G. Sinning
Index