In the three or four decades that followed the Meiji Restoration, Japan utterly transformed itself. The transformation was wide-ranging, deliberate, determined, and profound. By the beginning of World War I, Japan could justly claim to be among the leading nations of the world…
Work Between the Wars: Down the Mine
Coal continued to power British industry and warm British homes well into the second half of the twentieth century. Work in a coal mine was dirty, difficult and dangerous. George Orwell described the work in an essay published in 1937…
One Hundred and Fifty Years of American Growth
American technological progress was rapid between 1920 and 1970, and slow after 1970. Why was it so rapid before 1970? Why was it so slow after 1970?
Technological Progress and Economies of Scale
From the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century, one of the keys to growth was the exploitation of technologies that displayed increasing returns to scale…
Why Nations Fail: Extractive and Inclusive Institutions
Acemoglu and Robinson’s goal is to explain why some nations are rich and others are poor. They present a theory based on the interaction between political and economic institutions. Casual empiricism suggests that its explanatory power is quite strong…
Why Nations Fail: Theory is Tidy, History is Messy
Acemoglu and Robinson argue that sustained growth is almost always attained in a particular way: inclusive political institutions develop first, followed by inclusive economic institutions, followed by growth. They recognize the boldness of their claim…
Democracy’s Dilemma
There is more to democratic government than simply the right to vote. The temptation to exercise power in ways that advance self-interests at the expense of national interests must be controlled…
Ding Dong, the Witch is Still Very Much Alive
There were massive changes in economic institutions during the late twentieth century. China abandoned central planning. The Soviet Union collapsed, and its satellite states gained their political freedom and adopted free market systems. Socialism receded throughout Latin America and in India…
The Holodomor and Mao’s Famine
The Communist governments of Stalin and Mao were responsible for two of the worst famines in history…
The Modern Decline in Extreme Poverty
In 1970, more than two hundred years after the Industrial Revolution began, six in ten people still lived in extreme poverty. That number fell to just one in ten over the following forty-five years…
