How the World Became Rich

Author: Mark Koyama
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509540245
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
Most humans are significantly richer than their ancestors. Humanity gained nearly all of its wealth in the last two centuries. How did this come to pass? How did the world become rich? Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin dive into the many theories of why modern economic growth happened when and where it did. They discuss recently advanced theories rooted in geography, politics, culture, demography, and colonialism. Pieces of each of these theories help explain key events on the path to modern riches. Why did the Industrial Revolution begin in 18th-century Britain? Why did some European countries, the US, and Japan catch up in the 19th century? Why did it take until the late 20th and 21st centuries for other countries? Why have some still not caught up? Koyama and Rubin show that the past can provide a guide for how countries can escape poverty. There are certain prerequisites that all successful economies seem to have. But there is also no panacea. A society’s past and its institutions and culture play a key role in shaping how it may – or may not – develop.

How the World Became Rich

Author: Mark Koyama
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 9781509540235
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
Most humans are significantly richer than their ancestors. Humanity gained nearly all of its wealth in the last two centuries. How did this come to pass? How did the world become rich? Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin dive into the many theories of why modern economic growth happened when and where it did. They discuss recently-advanced theories rooted in geography, politics, culture, demography, and colonialism. Pieces of each of these theories help explain key events on the path to modern riches. Why did the Industrial Revolution begin in 18th-century Britain? Why did some European countries, the USA, Canada, and Japan catch up in the 19th century? Why did it take until the late 20th and 21st centuries for other countries? Why have some still not caught up? Koyama and Rubin show that the past can provide a guide for how countries can escape poverty. There are certain prerequisites that all successful economies seem to have. But there is also no panacea. A society’s past and its institutions and culture play a key role in shaping how it may—or may not—develop.

How The West Grew Rich

Author: Nathan Rosenberg
Publisher:
ISBN: 0786723483
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
How did the West--Europe, Canada, and the United States--escape from immemorial poverty into sustained economic growth and material well-being when other societies remained trapped in an endless cycle of birth, hunger, hardship, and death? In this elegant synthesis of economic history, two scholars argue that it is the political pluralism and the flexibility of the West's institutions--not corporate organization and mass production technology--that explain its unparalleled wealth.

Rulers, Religion, and Riches

Author: Jared Rubin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110703681X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Book Description
This book seeks to explain the political and religious factors leading to the economic reversal of fortunes between Europe and the Middle East.

Economics and World History

Author: Paul Bairoch
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226034631
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Book Description
Paul Bairoch deflates twenty commonly held myths about economic history. Among these myths are that free trade and population growth have historically led to periods of economic growth, and that colonial powers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries became rich through the exploitation of the Third World. Bairoch shows that these beliefs are based on insufficient knowledge and wrong interpretations of the history of economies of the United States, Europe, and the Third World, and he re-examines the facts to set the record straight. Bairoch argues that until the early 1960s, the history of international trade of the developed countries was almost entirely one of protectionism rather than a "Golden Era" of free trade, and he reveals that, in fact, past periods of economic growth in the Western World correlated strongly with protectionist policy. He also demonstrates that developed countries did not exploit the Third World for raw materials during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as some economists and many politicians have held. Among the many other myths that Bairoch debunks are beliefs about whether colonization triggered the Industrial Revolution, the effects of the economic development of the West on the Third World, and beliefs about the 1929 crash and the Great Depression. Bairoch's lucid prose makes the book equally accessible to economists of every stripe, as well as to historians, political scientists, and other social scientists.

Why Australia Prospered

Author: Ian W. McLean
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691171335
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Book Description
This book is the first comprehensive account of how Australia attained the world's highest living standards within a few decades of European settlement, and how the nation has sustained an enviable level of income to the present. Why Australia Prospered is a fascinating historical examination of how Australia cultivated and sustained economic growth and success. Beginning with the Aboriginal economy at the end of the eighteenth century, Ian McLean argues that Australia's remarkable prosperity across nearly two centuries was reached and maintained by several shifting factors. These included imperial policies, favorable demographic characteristics, natural resource abundance, institutional adaptability and innovation, and growth-enhancing policy responses to major economic shocks, such as war, depression, and resource discoveries. Natural resource abundance in Australia played a prominent role in some periods and faded during others, but overall, and contrary to the conventional view of economists, it was a blessing rather than a curse. McLean shows that Australia's location was not a hindrance when the international economy was centered in the North Atlantic, and became a positive influence following Asia's modernization. Participation in the world trading system, when it flourished, brought significant benefits, and during the interwar period when it did not, Australia's protection of domestic manufacturing did not significantly stall growth. McLean also considers how the country's notorious origins as a convict settlement positively influenced early productivity levels, and how British imperial policies enhanced prosperity during the colonial period. He looks at Australia's recent resource-based prosperity in historical perspective, and reveals striking elements of continuity that have underpinned the evolution of the country's economy since the nineteenth century.

A Farewell to Alms

Author: Gregory Clark
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400827817
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Book Description
Why are some parts of the world so rich and others so poor? Why did the Industrial Revolution--and the unprecedented economic growth that came with it--occur in eighteenth-century England, and not at some other time, or in some other place? Why didn't industrialization make the whole world rich--and why did it make large parts of the world even poorer? In A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark tackles these profound questions and suggests a new and provocative way in which culture--not exploitation, geography, or resources--explains the wealth, and the poverty, of nations. Countering the prevailing theory that the Industrial Revolution was sparked by the sudden development of stable political, legal, and economic institutions in seventeenth-century Europe, Clark shows that such institutions existed long before industrialization. He argues instead that these institutions gradually led to deep cultural changes by encouraging people to abandon hunter-gatherer instincts-violence, impatience, and economy of effort-and adopt economic habits-hard work, rationality, and education. The problem, Clark says, is that only societies that have long histories of settlement and security seem to develop the cultural characteristics and effective workforces that enable economic growth. For the many societies that have not enjoyed long periods of stability, industrialization has not been a blessing. Clark also dissects the notion, championed by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, that natural endowments such as geography account for differences in the wealth of nations. A brilliant and sobering challenge to the idea that poor societies can be economically developed through outside intervention, A Farewell to Alms may change the way global economic history is understood.

The Evolution of a Nation

Author: Daniel Berkowitz
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691136041
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
The book also examines the effects of early legal systems.

How Rich Countries Got Rich ... and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor

Author: Erik S Reinert
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541762886
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444

Book Description
A maverick economist explains how protectionism makes nations rich, free trade keeps them poor---and how rich countries make sure to keep it that way. Throughout history, some combination of government intervention, protectionism, and strategic investment has driven successful development everywhere from Renaissance Italy to the modern Far East. Yet despite the demonstrable success of this approach, development economists largely ignore it and insist instead on the importance of free trade. Somehow, the thing that made rich nations rich supposedly won't work on poor countries anymore. Leading heterodox economist Erik Reinert's invigorating history of economic development shows how Western economies were founded on protectionism and state activism and only later promoted free trade, when it worked to their advantage. In the tug-of-war between the gospel of government intervention and free-market purists, the issue is not that one is more correct, but that the winning nation tends to favor whatever benefits them most. As Western countries begin to sense that the rules of the game they set were rigged, Reinert's classic book gains new urgency. His unique and edifying approach to the history of economic development is critical reading for anyone who wants to understand how we got here and what to do next, especially now that we aren't so sure we'll be the winners anymore.

A Culture of Growth

Author: Joel Mokyr
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691168881
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Book Description
Why Enlightenment culture sparked the Industrial Revolution During the late eighteenth century, innovations in Europe triggered the Industrial Revolution and the sustained economic progress that spread across the globe. While much has been made of the details of the Industrial Revolution, what remains a mystery is why it took place at all. Why did this revolution begin in the West and not elsewhere, and why did it continue, leading to today's unprecedented prosperity? In this groundbreaking book, celebrated economic historian Joel Mokyr argues that a culture of growth specific to early modern Europe and the European Enlightenment laid the foundations for the scientific advances and pioneering inventions that would instigate explosive technological and economic development. Bringing together economics, the history of science and technology, and models of cultural evolution, Mokyr demonstrates that culture—the beliefs, values, and preferences in society that are capable of changing behavior—was a deciding factor in societal transformations. Mokyr looks at the period 1500–1700 to show that a politically fragmented Europe fostered a competitive "market for ideas" and a willingness to investigate the secrets of nature. At the same time, a transnational community of brilliant thinkers known as the “Republic of Letters” freely circulated and distributed ideas and writings. This political fragmentation and the supportive intellectual environment explain how the Industrial Revolution happened in Europe but not China, despite similar levels of technology and intellectual activity. In Europe, heterodox and creative thinkers could find sanctuary in other countries and spread their thinking across borders. In contrast, China’s version of the Enlightenment remained controlled by the ruling elite. Combining ideas from economics and cultural evolution, A Culture of Growth provides startling reasons for why the foundations of our modern economy were laid in the mere two centuries between Columbus and Newton.