The South African state created a dual economy, preventing 80 percent of the population from taking part in skilled occupations, commercial farming, and entrepreneurship. All this not only explains wh...
THE MOLUCCAN ARCHIPELAGO in modern Indonesia is made up of three groups of islands. In the early seventeenth century, the northern Moluccas housed the independent kingdoms of Tidore, Ternate, and Baca...
On the eve of the French Revolution in 1789, there were severe restrictions placed on Jews throughout Europe. In the German city of Frankfurt, for example, their lives were regulated by orders set out...
Noha Hamed, twenty-four, a worker at an advertising agency in Cairo, made her views clear as she demonstrated in Tahrir Square: We are suffering from corruption, oppression and bad education.
Nations fail when they have extractive economics institutions, supported by extractive political institutions that impede and even block economic growth. But this means that the choice of institutions...
Nations fail economically because of extractive institutions. These institutions keep poor countries poor and prevent them from embarking on a path to economic growth. This is true today in Africa, in...
Many, such as the Ottoman Empire, China, and other absolutist regimes, lagged behind as they blocked or at the very least did nothing to encourage the spread of industry. Political and economic instit...
Lack of creative destruction and innovation is not the only reason why there are severe limits to growth under extractive institutions. The history of the Maya city-states illustrates a more ominous a...
Kingdom of Kongo when European traders arrived. The long-distance trade that transformed Europe also transformed the Kingdom of Kongo, but again, initial institutional differences mattered. Kongolese...
In Egypt, for instance, the first printing press was set up only in 1798, by Frenchmen who were part of the abortive attempt by Napoleon Bonaparte to capture the country.
Improved health and life expectancy were not the cause of England’s economic success but one of the fruits of its previous political and economic changes.
Federal intervention to change the institutions in the South started with the decision of the Supreme Court in 1944 that primary elections where only white people could stand were unconstitutional. As...
Cuando el Estado no logra prácticamente ninguna centralización política, la sociedad, tarde o temprano, llega al caos,
Chinese economic growth today also has several commonalities with both the Soviet and South Korean experiences
China, despite many imperfections in its economic and political system, has been the most rapidly growing nation of the past three decades. Chinese poverty until Mao Zedong’s death had nothing to do w...
Bay in January 1788 under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip. On January 26, now celebrated as Australia Day, they set up camp in Sydney Cove, the heart of the modern city of Sydney.
We saw in the previous chapter how the process of political centralization under the Tudor monarchy in England increased demands for voice and representation by different local elites in national poli...
Under the Song dynasty, between 960 and 1279, China led the world in many technological innovatons. The Chinese invented clocks, the compass, gunpowder, paper and paper money, porcelein and the blast...
The Maya’s economy was based on extensive occupational specialization, with skilled potters, weavers, woodworkers, and tool and ornament makers. They also traded obsidian, jaguar pelts, marine shells,...
In our theory, Peru is so much poorer than Western Europe and the United States today because of its institutions, and to understand the reasons for this, we need to understand the historical process...