Transition Science in the Economy: How Five Global Shifts Are Collapsing the Middle Class and Rewriting Prosperity and Power (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798274564830)

For most of the twentieth century, GDP was treated as the ultimate scoreboard of progress. Today, it can rise while the climate destabilises, housing becomes unaffordable, critical infrastructure turns fragile and the middle class erodes. Transition Science in the Economy explains why the old compass no longer works - and what should replace it.

Fernando C. Gaspar introduces Transition Science, a new way of reading the global economy through five interdependent transitions: the Green Transition, the Digital Transition, the Transition to a New Globalization, the War Economy Transition and the Housing Crisis Transition. At the core of the book is the AWTY Index ("Are We There Yet?"), built from more than 150,000 country-year observations for 169 economies between 1990 and 2024.

Gaspar shows how these transitions create new development traps inside both advanced and emerging economies, and why the middle class is increasingly "measured out" of prosperity. He combines rigorous data with accessible storytelling, country examples and practical playbooks for governments, firms, investors and institutions.

This book is for decision-makers who cannot afford to be surprised by the next shock - and for readers who suspect that growth statistics are hiding as much as they reveal. It offers a transparent, reproducible way to measure transition readiness and to turn metrics into momentum.