What makes one nation successful in obtaining wealth, prosperity and power, while another nation succumbs to poverty? Is it the cultural differences, economic institutions, geography, or other factors? Why Nations Fail: The Origins Of Power, Prosperity And Poverty is a non-fiction book that attempts to give reasons for the economic rise or fall of a nation.
Handling one of the intriguing topics in economics, authors Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson have put in their insight in bringing up an interesting perspective on the factors governing the economical wellbeing of a nation. The book uses the vision from the concepts of institutional economics, development economics and economic history. The concepts deal with understanding of human evolution and institutions, economic aspects of low income countries and economic phenomena of the past.
Based on an original research for fifteen years, the authors have collected wide information from various historical civilizations. The research led to an understanding of the conditions and evolution of economy and politics. This helped the authors in coming up with a theory that entwines politics and economy in reasoning the prosperity and poverty of nations.
Product Details
- Paperback: 560 pages
- Publisher: Profile Books Ltd; Main edition (7 February 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1846684307
- ISBN-13: 978-1846684302
- Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 3.3 x 19.8 cm
Review
A must-read. Acemoglu and Robinson are intellectual heavyweights of the first rank
An important book
An intellectually rich book that develops an important thesis with verve
It's a great read. Like me, you may succumb to reading it in one go, and then you may come back to it again and again.
A must-read. Acemoglu and Robinson are intellectual heavyweights of the first rank ... they have done you the courtesy of writing a book that while at the intellectual cutting edge is not just readable but engrossing ... erudite and fascinating.
For those who think that a nation's economic fate is determined by geography or culture, Daron Acemoglu and Jim Robinson have bad news. It's man-made institutions, not the lay of the land or the faith of our forefathers, that determine whether a country is rich or poor. Synthesizing brilliantly the work of theorists from Adam Smith to Douglass North with more recent empirical research by economic historians, Acemoglu and Robinson have produced a compelling and highly readable book. And their conclusion is a cheering one: the authoritarian "extractive" institutions like the one's that drive growth in China today are bound to run out of steam. Without the inclusive institutions that first evolved in the West, sustainable growth is impossible, because only a truly free society can foster genuine innovation and the creative destruction that is its corollary.
This fascinating and readable book centers on the complex joint evolution of political and economic institutions, in good directions and bad. It strikes a delicate balance between the logic of political and economic behavior and the shifts in direction created by contingent historical events, large and small at 'critical junctures'. Acemoglu and Robinson provide an enormous range of historical examples to show how such shifts can tilt toward favorable institutions, progressive innovation and economic success or toward repressive institutions and eventual decay or stagnation. Somehow they can generate both excitement and reflection.
It's the politics, stupid! That is Acemoglu and Robinson's simple yet compelling explanation for why so many countries fail to develop. From the absolutism of the Stuarts to the antebellum South, from Sierra Leone to Colombia, this magisterial work shows how powerful elites rig the rules to benefit themselves at the expense of the many. Charting a careful course between the pessimists and optimists, the authors demonstrate history and geography need not be destiny. But they also document how sensible economic ideas and policies often achieve little in the absence of fundamental political change.
Two of the world's best and most erudite economists turn to the hardest issue of all: why are some nations poor and others rich? Written with a deep knowledge of economics and political history, this is perhaps the most powerful statement made to date that 'institutions matter.' A provocative, instructive, yet thoroughly enthralling book.
