Maria Puolakkainen

Congratulations to @DAcemogluMIT, @baselinescene & James Robinson on their @NobelPrize in Economic Sciences. While their work on institutions is important, it's crucial to remember that development is complex.

As @yuenyuenang, @mushtaqkhan100 & Ha-Joon Chang argue, effective institutions must be context-specific, not just replicas of Western models.... See more

WOMAN – It’s really about the risk to us as human beings, because we saw deaths in the last election. People fighting with machetes in the countryside, all because of “your politician” versus “my politician.”

Under-appreciated fact: today’s Nobel is, in large part, given for formally introducing class struggle into mainstream theory and empirics of economic growth and political development.

Their models of democratization and much of their historical analysis is effectively an argument that in some places, historical circumstances drove bargaining power... See more

Congrats to AJR! They are brilliant.

But I don't agree with their idealized portrayal of institutions in Western development

It is historically inaccurate, if not ideologized

Thus, not only do they struggle to explain China, they also can't explain why Western economies like the US prospered despite being as corrupt as China is today

Why Nations Fail is a bit longer than The Communist Manifesto , but it is essentially The Bourgeois Manifesto . Merchants having become wealthy from the Atlantic trade win property rights in England, already primed for this breakthrough. Resultant regime called inclusive , though the merchants were primarily slavers.

They will underline however... See more