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Recent & Popular Posts
- Critiques of Edward Baptist
- Critiques of The History Manifesto
- Did inequality cause the First World War?
- Did the "Invisible Blockade" against Allende work?
- Economic growth in ancient Greece
- Fascism was not left-wing!!!
- Greece from Post-war orthodoxy to "Democratic Peronism"
- Ideology & Human Development (on Cuba's social development)
- Labour repression & the Indo-Japanese divergence
- Markets & famines: Amartya Sen is not the last word!
- Nazi political economy
- Random Thoughts on Robert Allen's theory of the Industrial Revolution
- State Capacity & the Sino-Japanese Divergence
- Sven Beckert's Empire of Cotton: A Reductionist Summary
- The Bairoch conjecture & the "tariff-growth paradox" of the late 19th century
- The Calico Acts: Was British cotton made possible by infant industry protection from Indian competition?
- The Napoleonic Blockade & the Infant Industry Argument
- Various posts on slavery
- Was slavery necessary for the Industrial Revolution?
- Where do pro-social institutions come from?
Language Posts
Author Archives: pseudoerasmus
Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Reductionist Summary
Historian Sven Beckert’s widely acclaimed book, Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism, is a good agrarian, business, and labour history of a single commodity. But as economic history it’s not so good.
Posted in cotton, cotton textiles, Empire of Cotton, global history, historians of capitalism, Sven Beckert
Tagged cotton, deindustrialization, Economic Development, Empire of Cotton, global history, great divergence, historians of capitalism, Industrial Revolution, Rise of the West, Sven Beckert
40 Comments
Did inequality cause the First World War? Contra Hobson-Lenin-Milanovic
The “Hobson-Lenin Thesis”: Inequality, Imperialism, and the First World War In a small section in his new book, Branko Milanovic argues that the First World War was ultimately caused by income & wealth inequality within the belligerent countries, resurrecting ideas from John A. … Continue reading
Posted in Branko Milanovic, Foreign Investment, Inequality, the First Globalization, The First World War
Tagged and the first world war, Branko Milanovic, capital exports, colonialism, endogenous world war 1, Hobson, Hobson-Lenin Thesis, imperialism, inequality, Lenin, The Great War, underconsumption
24 Comments
Where do pro-social institutions come from?
AKA “Cooperation, cultural evolution & economic development”. Where do ‘good’ or pro-social institutions come from? Why does the capacity for collective action and cooperative behaviour vary so much across the world today? How do some populations transcend tribalism to form a civil society? How have some societies gone beyond personal … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural Evolution, Institutions, Political Economy, Social & Civic Capital, Social Evolution
Tagged Boyd & Richerson, collective action problem, cooperation, cultural evolution, cultural group selection, Joseph Henrich, market norms, Peter Turchin, social evolution, ultra-sociality
45 Comments
¿De donde vienen las instituciones prosociales?
[19 October 2015] Jesús Alfaro of the Autonomous University of Madrid has translated my previous post into Spanish: ¿De dónde vienen las instituciones prosociales?
Posted in Uncategorized
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“Experimenting with Social Norms” in Small-Scale Societies
Social norms, institutions, and economic development. (A companion post to “Where do pro-social institutions come from?”)
Posted in Cultural Evolution, Economic Anthropology, Institutions, Social Evolution
Tagged behavioral games, Dictator Game, Economic Experiments, Experimenting with Social Norms, Fairness and Punishment in Cross-cultural perspective, Foundations of Human Sociality, Jean Ensminger, Joseph Henrich, Third Party Punishment Game, Trust games, Ultimatum Game
9 Comments
Educational Romanticism & Economic Development
An elaboration on Ricardo Hausmann’s article “The Education Myth” arguing that education is an overrated tool of economic development. This post also responds to a criticism of Hausmann’s views which appeared at the Spanish group blog Politikon; and also discusses whether developing … Continue reading
Posted in economic growth, Education
Tagged achivement tests, PISA, Politikon, Ricardo Hausmann, school quality
14 Comments
Markets & Famine: Amartya Sen is not the last word !
Whether markets help cause or exacerbate famines is one of the great questions of political economy. Cormac Ó Gráda’s recent book Eating People is Wrong, and Other Essays on Famine, its Past, and its Future, along with his earlier volume, Famine: A Short … Continue reading
Posted in Famines
Tagged Amartya Sen, Bengal famine of 1943, Cormac Ó Gráda, famines, Irish Potato Famine
14 Comments
Anachronism & Relevance in History: a comment on Steve Pincus
Anachronism and relevance are in tension. Historians (often) rail against the former and (often) pine for the latter. They can easily manage a bit of relevance by intervening in today’s political and economic debates and offering ‘lessons’ from the past — but at high risk of … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged American Revolution, austerity, Grenville Chatham, Pitt, Seven Years' War, Steven Pincus
7 Comments
Did the “Invisible Blockade” against Allende’s Chile work?
Did an “invisible blockade” by the United States fatally undermine the Chilean economy under the presidency of Salvador Allende (1970-73)? Did it actually work? Short answer: No.
Posted in Chile, Political Economy
Tagged Allende, Bloqueo invisible, Chile, Invisible Blockade
14 Comments
