In “A Farewell to Alms,” Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California, Davis, suggests an intriguing, even startling answer: natural selection. David Landes, an economic historian and a living national treasure if there ever was one, began this movement nearly 10 years ago when he looked in part to culture to explain “why some are so rich and some so poor” (the subtitle of his classic overview of world history).īut why not go one step further: If culture is responsible, where does it come from? Why do some countries have an economically helpful culture while others don’t? And, since no society got very far in economic terms before the Industrial Revolution, what caused the culture of the recently successful ones to change? But where did they come from?Īfter decades of banishment to the realm of sociology and other such disciplines, the idea that a society’s “culture” matters has recently reappeared in economics. Do we think technological progress was responsible for the Industrial Revolution and the astonishing increase in living standards in some countries but not others since then? Fine, but what brought about the new technology? Maybe social and political institutions - democracy, tolerance, the rule of law - played a role in when and where living standards increased.
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