WHAT WE GET WRONG ABOUT PROSPERITY

Why do ideas that sound economically sensible so often fail as universal rules?

Democracy can improve development. Saving can finance investment. Consumers respond to price. GDP matters. Growth can reduce poverty. Natural resources can create extraordinary opportunities. Every one of these statements contains something true-and that is exactly why each can mislead when its conditions are forgotten.

In What We Get Wrong About Prosperity, economist and public-policy analyst Uwem Essia examines six familiar claims about how countries grow, how consumers choose, how national prosperity is measured, how the gains from growth are shared, and how resource wealth is turned-or fails to turn-into lasting productive capacity.

Drawing on economic theory, empirical research, and cases from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, the book gives each idea its strongest fair hearing before asking where the evidence forces a more careful conclusion. The result is not another ideological formula. It is a clearer way to think about economics: prosperity is produced by systems, not slogans.