Category Archives: Uncategorized

As a companion to my Economic History books page, which stresses economic history by region or country, I have created a new Economic History Papers page. It collects surveys, papers, and blogs which cover topics in global economic history and comparative historical development. But it’s … Continue reading →

[19 October 2015] Jesús Alfaro of the Autonomous University of Madrid has translated my previous post into Spanish: ¿De dónde vienen las instituciones prosociales?

Too many readers have believed Gregory Clark in A Farewell to Alms did not really address why England experienced the Industrial Revolution first. Right or wrong, Clark did offer an explanation.

This is a description of Proto, Rustichini & Sofianos, “Higher Intelligence Groups Have Higher Cooperation Rates in the Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma”. The text was originally embedded in the longer post, “Where do pro-social institutions come from?“, but several people asked me to make … Continue reading →

There are idiots in this world who babble about the rise and fall of the Islamic Golden Age in terms of rising and falling mean intelligence!!! Amazing. Here is a simple illustration of “more people, more ideas”.

This is my version of Open Thread. It’s for posting random & miscellaneous observations in the comments section. Sometimes they are longer responses/questions related to an exchange or debate I’ve had elsewhere. Sometimes they are unfinished blogposts.