| Book Name: | Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty |
| Category: | Politics Books |
| Language: | English |
| Format: | |
| Free Download: | Available |
Free Download Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty PDF Book
Book Description:
Why Nations Fail is a brilliant and exciting book that answers a question that has stumped experts for centuries: why are some countries rich and others poor? Why are some countries healthy and others sick? Why do some countries have food and others don’t?
Is it the people, the weather, or the place? Maybe they don’t know what the best policies are?
Simply, no. None of these things are final or set in stone. How else could you explain why Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone are poor and violent while Botswana is one of the fastest-growing countries in the world?
Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson show in a clear way that economic success is based on political and financial institutions made by people (or lack of it). Korea, for example, is a very similar country, but the people in North Korea are among the poorest in the world, while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south built a society with incentives, a reward system for innovation, and economic opportunities for everyone.
The economy did well because of this, and it stayed that way because the government became more accountable to the people and listened to them. People in the north have had to deal with famine, political repression, and very different economic systems for decades, and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. Politics created very different institutional paths for the two Koreas, making them different.
Based on fifteen years of original research, Acemoglu and Robinson use amazing historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of the political economy that has a lot to do with the big questions of today, such as:
– China has built an autocratic machine for growth. Will it keep growing at such a fast rate and take over the West?
– Has America seen its best days? Are we moving from a good circle in which elites’ attempts to get more power are resisted to a bad circle that makes a small minority rich and gives them more power?
What is the best way to help billions of people escape poverty and have a better life? More giving from the rich countries of the West? Or learning the hard lessons that Acemoglu and Robinson’s groundbreaking ideas about how political and economic institutions affect each other have taught us?
This book will change the way you look at the world and how you understand it.
Table of contents :
Preface
Why Egyptians filled Tahrir Square to bring down Hosni Mubarak and what it means for our understanding of the causes of prosperity and poverty
1. So Close and Yet So Different
Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora, have the same people, culture, and geography. Why is one rich and one poor?
2. Theories That Don’t Work
Poor countries are poor not because of their geographies or cultures or because their leaders do not know which policies will enrich their citizens.
3. The Making of Prosperity and Poverty
How the incentives created by institutions determine prosperity and poverty, and how politics determines what institutions a nation has
4. Small Differences and Critical Junctures: The Weight of History
How institutions change through political conflict and how the past shapes the present
5. “I’ve Seen the Future, and It Works”: Growth Under Extractive Institutions
What did Stalin, King Shyaam, the Neolithic Revolution, and the Maya city-states all have in common, and how does this explain why China?s current economic growth cannot last
6. Drifting Apart
How institutions evolve, often slowly drifting apart
7. The Turning Point
How a political revolution in 1688 changed institutions in England and led to the Industrial Revolution
8. Not on Our Turf: Barriers to Development
Why the politically powerful in many nations oppose the Industrial Revolution
9. Reversing Development
How European colonialism impoverished large parts of the world
10. The Diffusion of Prosperity
How some parts of the world took different paths to prosperity from that of Britain
11. The Virtuous Circle
How institutions that encourage prosperity create positive feedback loops that prevent the efforts by elites to undermine them
12. The Vicious Circle
How institutions that create poverty generate negative feedback loops and endure
13. Why Nations Fail Today
Institutions, institutions, institutions
14. Breaking the Mold
How a few countries changed their economic trajectory by changing their institutions
15. Understanding Prosperity and Poverty
How the world could have been different and how understanding this can explain why most attempts to combat poverty have failed
Acknowledgments
Bibliographical Essay and Sources
References
Index
Download Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty PDF
Author(s): Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson
Publisher: Profile Books, Year: 2012
ISBN: 1846684293,9781846684296
