书籍 Why Nations Fail的封面

Why Nations Fail

Daron Acemoglu

出版时间

2012-03-20

ISBN

9780307719218

评分

★★★★★
书籍介绍

Review

"'You will have three reasons to love this book. It's about national income differences within the modern world, perhaps the biggest problem facing the world today. It's peppered with fascinating stories that will make you a spellbinder at cocktail parties - such as why Botswana is prospering and Sierra Leone isn't. And it's a great read. Like me, you may succumb to reading it in one go, and then you may come back to it again and again.'

(Jared Diamond, Pulitzer-prize-winning author of bestselling books including 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' and 'Collapse')"

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Product Description

This is a provocative new theory of political economy explaining why the world is divided into nations with wildly differing levels of prosperity. Why are some nations more prosperous than others? "Why Nations Fail" sets out to answer this question, with a compelling and elegantly argued new theory: that it is not down to climate, geography or culture, but because of institutions. Drawing on an extraordinary range of contemporary and historical examples, from ancient Rome through the Tudors to modern-day China, leading academics Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson show that to invest and prosper, people need to know that if they work hard, they can make money and actually keep it - and this means sound institutions that allow virtuous circles of innovation, expansion and peace. Based on fifteen years of research, and answering the competing arguments of authors ranging from Max Weber to Jeffrey Sachs and Jared Diamond, Acemoglu and Robinson step boldly into the territory of Francis Fukuyama and Ian Morris. They blend economics, politics, history and current affairs to provide a new, powerful and persuasive way of understanding wealth and poverty. They offer a pragmatic basis for the hope that at 'critical junctures' in history, those mired in poverty can be placed on the path to prosperity - with important consequences for our views on everything from the role of aid to the future of China.

About the Author

Daron Acemoglu is the Killian Professor of Economics at MIT. He received the John Bates Clark Medal.

http://econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/acemoglu/

James Robinson is a political scientist and economist and the Florence Professor of Government at Harvard University, and a world-renowned expert on Latin America and Africa.

http://scholar.harvard.edu/jrobinson

They are...

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目录
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?

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用户评论
啃完了。
第一本完整读完的非教材英文书,花了一年多才吭哧读完,已经无力评论
畅销书嘛,你懂的。宏大叙事听起来,都蛮像那么回事的,不过本姐姐已经免疫了。God is in details...
弃书。本来对这书有极高的期待,毕竟作者是MIT经济学教授,但看了大半本后发现只剩广度可以夸了。除了知道了很多历史故事,补足了我对Chichen Itza的认知之外,几乎没有给我任何站得住脚的观点,更不要说洞见。 把不同国家简单粗暴地在政治制度和经济体系划分为Extractive和Inclusive,然后就开始cherry-picking讲extractive的政治体系如何阻碍经济发展,如何就算取得一定成就也不可能持续发展。就算我某种程度上同意部分观点,但一本试图解释为什么一些国家经济失败的书,除了制度之外,完全不去分析资源、历史遗留原因、外部环境、时代因素等其他重要变量,要人怎么信服? 社科这种蕴含庞大产量、复杂模型的学问,为什么要摆出一副只有你一家的解释是唯一真理的姿态?这不是找锤吗?
具有此类书的优点和缺点。
当政府或一小群菁英控制所有资源时,将无法创造出正确的诱因,人们的技术和才能也无法获得有效的配置。
Acemoglu与Robinson两位大拿对他们在五大上批发论文的一个总结性案例集册。撰写颇多,视野高远,文笔娴熟流畅,历史和例证亦非常博雅,信息量巨大,可读性上佳。但因其西方式立场鲜明,露骨的主题先行(good "inclusive" or "pluralistic" ones VS bad "extractive" or "absolutist" ones),以春秋笔法书写,用削足适履罗列。盛名之下,不宜深究。注:简体中文版涉及中国部分有大幅删节,阅读原版为好。
还不错的framework(尽管有些reductivism& deterministic),但一定要写成五百页的畅销书吗…
之前被预警过很差,放低期待读了四章感觉还行。确实没有什么超出North他们和辉格史观的东西,也不太讲科学的因果,不过大致意思是在理的。
论据充分,启发性很强,但是全书的编排条理有很大问题