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When first published in 1979, The Irony of Vietnam raised eyebrows. The book offers a picture of a steely resolve in government circles that, while useful in creating consensus, did not allow for alternative perspectives. In the years since its publication, The Irony of Vietnam has come to be considered the seminal work on the Vietnam War.

How can we identify who benefits from government programs aimed at solving our social problem and who pays for them? With so many problems, how can we allocate scarce funds to promote the maximum well-being of our citizens? In this book, Alice M. Rivlin examines the contributions that systematic analysis has made to decision making in the government's "social action" programs.

In this revised and expanded version of the Godkin Lectures presented at the John F. Kennedy School at Harvard University in April 1974, Arthur M. Okun explores the conflicts that arise when society's desire to reduce inequality would impair economic efficiency, confronting policymakers with "the big tradeoff".

The experience accumulated in the wake of more than two decades of sustained effort to promote growth and change in the low-income countries presents a rich field for scholarly inquiry and new insights into the development process.