According to the World Bank (2018), extreme poverty (i.e. less than $1.90 a day) has plummeted from 36 per cent of the world population in 1990 to 10 per cent in 2015. This information is not as well-known as it should be.A Barna Group survey (2014) found that 84 per cent of Americans are unaware that extreme poverty worldwide has decreased by more than half in the past three decades. Sixty-seven per cent said they thought global poverty was actually increasing during that time. Similarly, a later study (Lampert & Papadongonas, 2016) found that only 8 per cent of Americans and Germans believe extreme global poverty has decreased in the last 20 years. In India and Indonesia, it was respectively 27 per cent and 16 per cent.Given the ignorance surrounding global poverty's decline, the reasons for its decline are probably even less known. As The Economist (2013) reports, "The world's achievement in the field of poverty reduction is, by almost any measure, impressive". The United Nations' aim of halving global poverty between 1990 and 2015 was achieved five years early … The [Millennium Development Goals] may have helped marginally, by creating a yardstick for measuring progress, and by focusing minds on the evil of poverty. Most of the credit, however, must go to capitalism and free trade, for they enable economies to growand it was growth, principally, that has eased destitution.This last statement about free trade and economic growth is often controversial in the popular press and among political leaders. However, pro-trade endorsements are not controversial among professional economists (Mankiw, 2015a). For example, a 2009 survey of members of

Numerous empirical studies suggest that market exchange helps (a) create the conditions for liberal values to flourish, (b) refine our sense of fairness, (c) promote cooperation with those who are different from ourselves, (d) develop networks of mutual trust and trustworthiness, (e) generate tolerance and respect towards others, and (f) undermine hostility and conflict in favour of peace. This article reviews this empirical evidence and argues that markets make us better people, morally speaking.

This article presents the history of anti‐black racism in the United States as a case study of the interrelation between economic institutions and racial (in)tolerance. It begins by reviewing the current social science on the topic of economic systems and tolerance. It then moves from the history of slavery through Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era to the Civil Rights movement, demonstrating that government intervention in the economy helped maintain a racial hierarchy and solidify racist attitudes. The article concludes by arguing that liberal economic institutions are a means of dissolving segregated racial orders and creating more tolerant, integrated ones.