Why Nations Fail

Why Nations Fail PDF Author: Daron Acemoglu
Publisher: Crown Currency
ISBN: 0307719227
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • From two winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, “who have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity” “A wildly ambitious work that hopscotches through history and around the world to answer the very big question of why some countries get rich and others don’t.”—The New York Times FINALIST: Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Economist, BusinessWeek, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, The Plain Dealer Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, or geography that determines prosperity or poverty? As Why Nations Fail shows, none of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Drawing on fifteen years of original research, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is our man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it). Korea, to take just one example, is a remarkably homogenous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created those two different institutional trajectories. Acemoglu and Robinson marshal extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, among them: • Will China’s economy continue to grow at such a high speed and ultimately overwhelm the West? • Are America’s best days behind it? Are we creating a vicious cycle that enriches and empowers a small minority? “This book will change the way people think about the wealth and poverty of nations . . . as ambitious as Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel.”—BusinessWeek

Why Nations Fail

Why Nations Fail PDF Author: Daron Acemoglu
Publisher: Crown Currency
ISBN: 0307719227
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 546

Get Book Here

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • From two winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, “who have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity” “A wildly ambitious work that hopscotches through history and around the world to answer the very big question of why some countries get rich and others don’t.”—The New York Times FINALIST: Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Economist, BusinessWeek, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, The Plain Dealer Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, or geography that determines prosperity or poverty? As Why Nations Fail shows, none of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Drawing on fifteen years of original research, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is our man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it). Korea, to take just one example, is a remarkably homogenous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created those two different institutional trajectories. Acemoglu and Robinson marshal extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, among them: • Will China’s economy continue to grow at such a high speed and ultimately overwhelm the West? • Are America’s best days behind it? Are we creating a vicious cycle that enriches and empowers a small minority? “This book will change the way people think about the wealth and poverty of nations . . . as ambitious as Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel.”—BusinessWeek

The Narrow Corridor

The Narrow Corridor PDF Author: Daron Acemoglu
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735224404
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 593

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Book Description
From the winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize for Economics and the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail "Why is it so difficult to develop and sustain liberal democracy? The best recent work on this subject comes from a remarkable pair of scholars, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. In their latest book, The Narrow Corridor, they have answered this question with great insight." —Fareed Zakaria, The Washington Post In Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argued that countries rise and fall based not on culture, geography, or chance, but on the power of their institutions. In their new book, they build a new theory about liberty and how to achieve it, drawing a wealth of evidence from both current affairs and disparate threads of world history. Liberty is hardly the "natural" order of things. In most places and at most times, the strong have dominated the weak and human freedom has been quashed by force or by customs and norms. Either states have been too weak to protect individuals from these threats, or states have been too strong for people to protect themselves from despotism. Liberty emerges only when a delicate and precarious balance is struck between state and society. There is a Western myth that political liberty is a durable construct, arrived at by a process of "enlightenment." This static view is a fantasy, the authors argue. In reality, the corridor to liberty is narrow and stays open only via a fundamental and incessant struggle between state and society: The authors look to the American Civil Rights Movement, Europe’s early and recent history, the Zapotec civilization circa 500 BCE, and Lagos’s efforts to uproot corruption and institute government accountability to illustrate what it takes to get and stay in the corridor. But they also examine Chinese imperial history, colonialism in the Pacific, India’s caste system, Saudi Arabia’s suffocating cage of norms, and the “Paper Leviathan” of many Latin American and African nations to show how countries can drift away from it, and explain the feedback loops that make liberty harder to achieve. Today we are in the midst of a time of wrenching destabilization. We need liberty more than ever, and yet the corridor to liberty is becoming narrower and more treacherous. The danger on the horizon is not "just" the loss of our political freedom, however grim that is in itself; it is also the disintegration of the prosperity and safety that critically depend on liberty. The opposite of the corridor of liberty is the road to ruin.

Summary of Why Nations Fail

Summary of Why Nations Fail PDF Author: Instaread
Publisher: Instaread
ISBN: 168378507X
Category : Study Aids
Languages : en
Pages : 29

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Book Description


Pillars of Prosperity

Pillars of Prosperity PDF Author: Timothy Besley
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691158150
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
How nations can promote peace, prosperity, and stability through cohesive political institutions "Little else is required to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things." So wrote Adam Smith a quarter of a millennium ago. Using the tools of modern political economics and combining economic theory with a bird's-eye view of the data, this book reinterprets Smith's pillars of prosperity to explain the existence of development clusters—places that tend to combine effective state institutions, the absence of political violence, and high per-capita incomes. To achieve peace, the authors stress the avoidance of repressive government and civil conflict. Easy taxes, they argue, refers not to low taxes, but a tax system with widespread compliance that collects taxes at a reasonable cost from a broad base, like income. And a tolerable administration of justice is about legal infrastructure that can support the enforcement of contracts and property rights in line with the rule of law. The authors show that countries tend to enjoy all three pillars of prosperity when they have evolved cohesive political institutions that promote common interests, guaranteeing the provision of public goods. In line with much historical research, international conflict has also been an important force behind effective states by fostering common interests. The absence of common interests and/or cohesive political institutions can explain the existence of very different development clusters in fragile states that are plagued by poverty, violence, and weak state capacity.

From Poverty to Power

From Poverty to Power PDF Author: Duncan Green
Publisher: Oxfam
ISBN: 0855985933
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 540

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Book Description
Offers a look at the causes and effects of poverty and inequality, as well as the possible solutions. This title features research, human stories, statistics, and compelling arguments. It discusses about the world we live in and how we can make it a better place.

In the Wake of the Crisis

In the Wake of the Crisis PDF Author: Olivier Blanchard
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262301083
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
Prominent economists reconsider the fundamentals of economic policy for a post-crisis world. In 2011, the International Monetary Fund invited prominent economists and economic policymakers to consider the brave new world of the post-crisis global economy. The result is a book that captures the state of macroeconomic thinking at a transformational moment. The crisis and the weak recovery that has followed raise fundamental questions concerning macroeconomics and economic policy. These top economists discuss future directions for monetary policy, fiscal policy, financial regulation, capital-account management, growth strategies, the international monetary system, and the economic models that should underpin thinking about critical policy choices. Contributors Olivier Blanchard, Ricardo Caballero, Charles Collyns, Arminio Fraga, Már Guðmundsson, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Otmar Issing, Olivier Jeanne, Rakesh Mohan, Maurice Obstfeld, José Antonio Ocampo, Guillermo Ortiz, Y. V. Reddy, Dani Rodrik, David Romer, Paul Romer, Andrew Sheng, Hyun Song Shin, Parthasarathi Shome, Robert Solow, Michael Spence, Joseph Stiglitz, Adair Turner

Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy

Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy PDF Author: Daron Acemoglu
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521855266
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
This book develops a framework for analyzing the creation and consolidation of democracy. Different social groups prefer different political institutions because of the way they allocate political power and resources. Thus democracy is preferred by the majority of citizens, but opposed by elites. Dictatorship nevertheless is not stable when citizens can threaten social disorder and revolution. In response, when the costs of repression are sufficiently high and promises of concessions are not credible, elites may be forced to create democracy. By democratizing, elites credibly transfer political power to the citizens, ensuring social stability. Democracy consolidates when elites do not have strong incentive to overthrow it. These processes depend on (1) the strength of civil society, (2) the structure of political institutions, (3) the nature of political and economic crises, (4) the level of economic inequality, (5) the structure of the economy, and (6) the form and extent of globalization.

Redesigning AI

Redesigning AI PDF Author: Daron Acemoglu
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 1946511633
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 141

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Book Description
A look at how new technologies can be put to use in the creation of a more just society. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not likely to make humans redundant. Nor will it create superintelligence anytime soon. But it will make huge advances in the next two decades, revolutionize medicine, entertainment, and transport, transform jobs and markets, and vastly increase the amount of information that governments and companies have about individuals. AI for Good leads off with economist and best-selling author Daron Acemoglu, who argues that there are reasons to be concerned about these developments. AI research today pays too much attention to the technological hurtles ahead without enough attention to its disruptive effects on the fabric of society: displacing workers while failing to create new opportunities for them and threatening to undermine democratic governance itself. But the direction of AI development is not preordained. Acemoglu argues for its potential to create shared prosperity and bolster democratic freedoms. But directing it to that task will take great effort: It will require new funding and regulation, new norms and priorities for developers themselves, and regulations over new technologies and their applications. At the intersection of technology and economic justice, this book will bring together experts--economists, legal scholars, policy makers, and developers--to debate these challenges and consider what steps tech companies can do take to ensure the advancement of AI does not further diminish economic prospects of the most vulnerable groups of population.

21st Century Economics

21st Century Economics PDF Author: Bruno S. Frey
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030177408
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
Economics is a science that can contribute substantial powerful and fresh insights! This book collects essays by leading academics that evaluate the scholarly importance of contemporary economic ideas and concepts, thus providing valuable knowledge about the present state of economics and its progress. This compilation of short essays helps readers interested in economics to identify 21st century economic ideas that should be read and remembered. The authors state their personal opinion on what matters most in contemporary economics and reveal its fascinating and creative sides.

Upheaval

Upheaval PDF Author: Jared Diamond
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316409154
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book Description
A "riveting and illuminating" Bill Gates Summer Reading pick about how and why some nations recover from trauma and others don't (Yuval Noah Harari), by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the landmark bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel. In his international bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, in his third book in this monumental trilogy, he reveals how successful nations recover from crises while adopting selective changes -- a coping mechanism more commonly associated with individuals recovering from personal crises. Diamond compares how six countries have survived recent upheavals -- ranging from the forced opening of Japan by U.S. Commodore Perry's fleet, to the Soviet Union's attack on Finland, to a murderous coup or countercoup in Chile and Indonesia, to the transformations of Germany and Austria after World War Two. Because Diamond has lived and spoken the language in five of these six countries, he can present gut-wrenching histories experienced firsthand. These nations coped, to varying degrees, through mechanisms such as acknowledgment of responsibility, painfully honest self-appraisal, and learning from models of other nations. Looking to the future, Diamond examines whether the United States, Japan, and the whole world are successfully coping with the grave crises they currently face. Can we learn from lessons of the past? Adding a psychological dimension to the in-depth history, geography, biology, and anthropology that mark all of Diamond's books, Upheaval reveals factors influencing how both whole nations and individual people can respond to big challenges. The result is a book epic in scope, but also his most personal yet.