This book does not overlap with my earlier book, The Theory of Economic Growth, partly because the fist book is philosophical while the second is operational, but mainly because I had not yet had experience of most of the problems discussed in the second book while I was writing the first. In order to be comprehensive the second book would need the extensive discussion of economic institutions and their improvement which appears in the first, but I have resisted the temptation to repeat myself, since most readers of this book will also access to the earlier one.