THE CONTRAST OF South and North Korea, and of the United States and Latin America, illustrates a general principle. Inclusive economic institutions foster economic activity, productivity growth, and e...
Most important perhaps, in most of these cases there were enormous benefits from holding power. These benefits both attracted the most unscrupulous men, such as Stevens, who wished to monopolize this...
Inclusive economic institutions also pave the way for two other engines of prosperity: technology and education. Sustained economic growth is almost always accompanied by technological improvements th...
Inclusive economic and political institutions do not emerge by themselves. They are often the outcome of significant conflict between elites resisting economic growth and political change and those wi...
The process of political centralization can actually lead to a form of absolutism, as the king and his associates can crush other powerful groups in society. This is indeed one of the reasons why ther...
After 1688 the state began to rely more on talent and less on political appointees, and developed a powerful infrastructure to run the country.
During the critical juncture created by the Industrial Revolution, many nations missed the boat and failed to take advantage of the spread of industry. Either they had absolutist political and extract...
Fear of creative destruction is often at the root of the opposition to inclusive economic and political institutions.
In 1500 standards of living were probably at least as high in China as they were in Europe.
Globalization made the large open spaces of the Americas, its open frontiers, valuable. Often these frontiers were only mythically open, since they were inhabited by indigenous peoples who were brutal...
Inclusive economic institutions that enforce property rights, create a level playing field, and encourage investments in new technologies and skills are more conducive to economic growth than extracti...
Science of economics should focus on the best use of scarce means to satisfy social ends.
Of the five hundred who entered the winter, only sixty were alive by March. The situation was so desperate that they resorted to cannibalism.
Extractive institutions that have achieved at least a minimal degree of political centralization are often able to generate some amount of growth. What is crucial, however, is that growth under extrac...
Albeit of a particularly vicious and inefficient type. Countries become failed states not because of their geography or their culture, but because of the legacy of extractive institutions,
The average Egyptian has an income level of around 12 percent of the average citizen of the United States and can expect to live ten fewer years; 20 percent of the population is in dire poverty. Thoug...
Putting an end to foreign aid is impractical and would likely lead to additional human suffering. It is impractical because citizens of many Western nations feel guilt and unease about the economic an...
World inequality today exists because during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries some nations were able to take advantage of the Industrial Revolution and the technologies and methods of organizati...
The solution to the economic and political failure of nations today is to transform their extractive institutions toward inclusive ones. The vicious circle means that this is not easy. But it is not i...
But all this does not imply that foreign aid, except the humanitarian kind, should cease. Putting an end to foreign aid is impractical and would likely lead to additional human suffering. It is imprac...
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