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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| fdd6511 | At the dawn of the nineteenth century, many parts of the world, especially in Africa, lacked a state that could provide even a minimal degree of law and order, which is a prerequisite for having a modern economy. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 6014298 | 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 wishing to limit the economic and political power of existing elites. Inclusive institutions emerge during critical junctures, such as during the Glorious Revolution in England or the foundation of the Jamestown colony in North America, when a se.. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 762237b | 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, cacao, salt, and feathers among themselves and other polities over long distances in Mexico. They probably had money, too, and like the Aztecs, used cacao beans for currency. The | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 7f96ebf | NATIONS FAIL TODAY because their extractive economic institutions do not create the incentives needed for people to save, invest, and innovate. Extractive political institutions support these economic institutions by cementing the power of those who benefit from the extraction. Extractive economic and political institutions, though their details vary under different circumstances, are always at the root of this failure. In many cases, for e.. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| d246331 | When I want to read a book I write one. | Authors | ||
| cd0a8c0 | All writing comes by the grace of God, and all doing and having. | Authors | ||
| f91f282 | The lover of letters loves power too. | Authors | ||
| 2a66276 | The government in North Korea is a communist dictatorship opposed to private property and markets. But it is difficult to control black markets, and black markets make transactions in cash. Of course quite a bit of foreign exchange is involved, particularly Chinese currency, but many transactions use won. The currency reform was designed to punish people who used these markets and, more specifically, to make sure that they did not become to.. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 7c5d24e | Infighting and instability are thus inherent features of extractive institutions, and they not only create further inefficiencies but also often reverse any political centralization, sometimes even leading to the total breakdown of law and order and descent into chaos, as the Maya city-states experienced following their relative success during their Classical Era. Though | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| bc3ea49 | 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 impossible, and the iron law of oligarchy is not inevitable. Either some preexisting inclusive elements in institutions, or the presence of broad coalitions leading the fight against the existing regime, or just the contingent nature of history,.. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 0315adb | The institutional dynamics we have described ultimately determined which countries took advantage of the major opportunities present in the nineteenth century onward and which ones failed to do so. The roots of the world inequality we observe today can be found in this divergence. With a few exceptions, the rich countries of today are those that embarked on the process of industrialization and technological change starting in the nineteenth.. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| a5e6aaf | BOTSWANA, CHINA, and the U.S. South, just like the Glorious Revolution in England, the French Revolution, and the Meiji Restoration in Japan, are vivid illustrations that history is not destiny. Despite the vicious circle, extractive institutions can be replaced by inclusive ones. But it is neither automatic nor easy. A confluence of factors, in particular a critical juncture coupled with a broad coalition of those pushing for reform or oth.. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| f129dc1 | Political power was thus widely dispersed in Somali society, almost pluralistically. But without the authority of a centralized state to enforce order, let alone property rights, this led not to inclusive institutions. Nobody respected the authority of another, and nobody, including the British colonial state when it eventually arrived, was able to impose order. The lack of political centralization made it impossible for Somalia to benefit .. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 781096b | Why did this unique process start in England and why in the seventeenth century? Why did England develop pluralistic political institutions and break away from extractive institutions? As we have seen, the political developments leading up to the Glorious Revolution were shaped by several interlinked processes. Central was the political conflict between absolutism and its opponents. The outcome of this conflict not only put a stop to the at.. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 1be26cd | Australia was not Britain, and its law would not be just British. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 7e9236e | While Bigge was trying to turn back the clock, ex-convicts and their sons and daughters were demanding greater rights. Most important, they realized, again just as in the United States, that to consolidate their economic and political rights fully they needed political institutions that would include them in the process of decision making. They demanded elections in which they could participate as equals and representative institutions and .. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| b8a3d8e | Today we still call the standard method of achieving secrecy in voting in elections the Australian ballot. The | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| dd924fc | Inclusive economic institutions, such as those in South Korea or in the United States, are those that allow and encourage participation by the great mass of people in economic activities that make best use of their talents and skills and that enable individuals to make the choices they wish. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 8da1ddf | Like his that lights a candle to the sun. | Authors | ||
| a312131 | 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 political institutions as a way of staving off this loss of political power. A stronger Parliament was created, ultimately enabling the emergence of inclusive political institutions. But | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| a61e9bd | But in many other cases, just the opposite takes place, and the process of political centralization also ushers in an era of greater absolutism. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 569a6fc | 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 extractive economic institutions, as in the Ottoman Empire, or they lacked political centralization, as in Somalia. A | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 7c268bf | AUSTRALIA, LIKE THE UNITED STATES, experienced a different path to inclusive institutions than the one taken by England. The same revolutions that shook England during the Civil War and then the Glorious Revolution were not needed in the United States or Australia because of the very different circumstances in which those countries were founded--though this of course does not mean that inclusive institutions were established without any con.. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| f16c86e | Absolutism reigned not just in much of Europe but also in Asia, and similarly prevented industrialization during the critical juncture created by the Industrial Revolution. The Ming and Qing dynasties of China and the absolutism of the Ottoman Empire illustrate this pattern. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| c46c7db | Finally, when growth comes under extractive political institutions but where economic institutions have inclusive aspects, as they did in South Korea, there is always the danger that economic institutions become more extractive and growth stops. Those controlling political power will eventually find it more beneficial to use their power to limit competition, to increase their share of the pie, or even to steal and loot from others rather th.. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 74517e3 | Absolutism reigned not just in much of Europe but also in Asia, and similarly prevented industrialization during the critical juncture created by the Industrial Revolution. The Ming and Qing dynasties of China and the absolutism of the Ottoman Empire illustrate this pattern. Under the Song dynasty, between 960 and 1279, China led the world in many technological innovations. The Chinese invented clocks, the compass, gunpowder, paper and pape.. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 81e890d | 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 that enable people (labor), land, and existing capital (buildings, existing machines, and so on) to become more productive. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| cc88d08 | The reasoning of the Ming and Qing states for opposing international trade is by now familiar: the fear of creative destruction. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 41f4bc3 | The consequence of all this absolutist control of the economy was predictable: the Chinese economy was stagnant throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries while other economies were industrializing. By the time Mao set up his communist regime in 1949, China had become one of the poorest countries in the world. T | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 88eb2f4 | The Manchester Act was a significant victory for the nascent cotton manufacturers. But its historical and economic significance was in fact much greater. First, it demonstrated the limits of entry barriers that the pluralistic political institutions of parliamentary England would permit. Second, over the next half century, technological innovations in the manufacture of cotton cloth would play a central role in the Industrial Revolution and.. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 0182024 | Naturally, the type of dual economy articulated in Verwoerd's speech is rather different from Lewis's dual economy theory. In South Africa the dual economy was not an inevitable outcome of the process of development. It was created by the state. In South Africa there was to be no seamless movement of poor people from the backward to the modern sector as the economy developed. On the contrary, the success of the modern sector relied on the e.. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| aa243f4 | Creative destruction redistributes not simply income and wealth, but also political power, | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 8628d0a | Without the changes in political institutions and political power similar to those that emerged in England after 1688, there was little chance for absolutist countries to benefit from the innovations and new technologies of the Industrial Revolution. In Spain, for example, the lack of secure property rights and the widespread economic decline meant that people simply did not have the incentive to make the necessary investments and sacrifice.. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 1a061b4 | 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 organization that it brought while others were unable to do so. Technological change is only one of the engines of prosperity, but it is perhaps the most critical one. The countries that did not take advantage of new technologies did not benefit from the.. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 9a0597c | 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 why industrialization passed by large parts of the world but also encapsulates how economic development may sometimes feed on, and even create, the underdevelopment in some other part of the domestic or the world economy. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 35f6afc | There could be some economic growth without innovation, relying on existing technology, but it was growth without creative destruction. And it did not last. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 2e45807 | stagnation | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| f80db01 | The Black Death is a vivid example of a critical juncture, a major event or confluence of factors disrupting the existing economic or political balance in society. A critical juncture is a double-edged sword that can cause a sharp turn in the trajectory of a nation. On the one hand it can open the way for breaking the cycle of extractive institutions and enable more inclusive ones to emerge, as in England. Or it can intensify the emergence .. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 0c32022 | While in England the profits of the slave trade helped to enrich those who opposed absolutism, in Africa they helped to create and strengthen absolutism. Farther | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| c9a4b27 | WE WILL ARGUE that to understand world inequality we have to understand why some societies are organized in very inefficient and socially undesirable ways. Nations sometimes do manage to adopt efficient institutions and achieve prosperity, but alas, these are the rare cases. Most economists and policymakers have focused on "getting it right," while what is really needed is an explanation for why poor nations "get it wrong." Getting it wrong.. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| af2b8f8 | No two societies create the same institutions; they will have distinct customs, different systems of property rights, and different ways of dividing a killed animal or loot stolen from another group. Some will recognize the authority of elders, others will not; some will achieve some degree of political centralization early on, but not others. Societies are constantly subject to economic and political conflict that is resolved in different .. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| a9d59fc | The leaders of the French Revolution and, subsequently, Napoleon exported the revolution to these lands, destroying absolutism, ending feudal land relations, abolishing guilds, and imposing equality before the law--the all-important notion of rule of law, which we will discuss in greater detail in the next chapter. The French Revolution thus prepared not only France but much of the rest of Europe for inclusive institutions and the economic .. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 3a017e4 | Technological innovation makes human societies prosperous, but also involves the replacement of the old with the new, and the destruction of the economic privileges and political power of certain people. | Daron Acemoğlu | ||
| 1bb7a7c | Their name, their years, spelt by the unlettered Muse. | Authors |