This volume is an academic umbrella for key contribu­tions developed within the “State of the Nation” project (www.starea-natiunii.ro), which advances the creation and institutionalization of a statistical data aggregator covering multidisciplinary areas, to be used in the process of strategy- and policy-making. The book comprises a collection of contributions that revisit, from a theoretical and/or empirical standpoint, the key advances in the field, taking into consideration the past and current crises, as well as the changing patterns of globalization. Authors have sometimes engaged in an experimental, yet coura­geous revision of the fundamental concepts related to the topic: development vs. underdevelopment, inequal­ity, wealth vs. poverty, first world vs. second world vs. third world.