STRADDLING ECONOMICS AND POLITICS: Cross-Cutting Issues in Asia, the United States, and the Global Economy, by Charles Wolf Jr. Santa Monica, CA.: Rand, 2002, 210 pp., $20 (paper) You have to give Charles Wolf credit. It takes courage to reprint articles when some of the predictions included are flat-out wrong. And not only does Wolf bare those mistakes, but he even provides a postscript to each article, pointing them out. Yet even when he is wrong, Wolf's analysis is worth considering. And fortunately, there is far more right than wrong in this collection.

Wolf is former dean of the RAND graduate school and head of its international economics program at the think tank. The 38 essays were written between 1996 and mid 2001, although two were published in 2002. Most of the articles originally appeared in newspapers, such as the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal.

As expected, Wolf's work is solid analysis that sticks pretty much to the middle of the road. He likes markets and doesn't stray too far from conventional approaches to economic problems. Unlike, say, Paul Krugman, the writing isn't very flashy.

That lends itself to a tendency to deflate the latest "new thing." For example, he concludes: "There are both hype and reality to globalization. But typically the hype much exceeds the reality." His review of the history of international integration leads him to conclude that "globalization has been too little and too limited to realize the potential gains, rather than having been so pervasive and relentless as to overwhelm resistance by those who would be adversely affected."