Daron Acemoglu

Kaatavatko kulttuuri, ilmasto vai maantiede maat? Vai kenties tietämättömyys oikeista toimenpiteistä? Ei. Yksikään näistä tekijöistä ei ole ratkaiseva tai kohtalo. Miten siis selitetään se, että Botswanasta on tullut yksi maailman nopeimmin kasvatista maista, mutta Zimbabwen, Kongon tai Sierra Leonen kaltaiset Afrikan valtiot ovat juuttuneet köyhyyteen ja väkivaltaan? Daron Acemoglu ja James A. Robinson osoittavat kiistatta ja monin modernein ja historiasta otetuin esimerkein, että ihmisen itsensä rakentamat poliittiset ja taloudelliset instituutiot ovat taloudellisen menestyksen (tai sen puuttumisen) perusta. Viisitoista vuotta kestäneen tutkimustyönsä perusteella Acemoglu ja Robinson jakavat instituutiot kahteen luokkaan: inklusiivisiin ja ekstraktiivisiin. Inklusiiviset ottavat kaikki kansalaiset yhteiskunnan toimintaan ja luovat heille kannustimet omatoimisuudelle ja menestykselle. Ekstraktiiviset instituutiot taas vievät kansalaisten työn tulokset ja käytännössä tukahduttavat kehityksen. Ja inklusiiviset instituutiot ovat normina vauraissa maissa. Teoriansa pohjalta Acemoglu ja Robinson tarttuvat muun muassa seuraaviin ongelmiin: Kiina on rakentanut auktoritaarisuuteen perustuvan kasvun. Jatkaako se samalla uralla ja ottaa lännen kiinni? Ovatko Yhdysvaltain parhaat päivät takana? Onko se siirtymässä eliittien valtaa vastustavasta hyvästä kierteestä noidankehään, joka rikastuttaa pientä vähemmistöä ja antaa sille kaiken vallan? Mikä on tehokkain tapa auttaa köyhyyteen juuttuneet miljardit vaurauteen johtavalle tielle?

NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER - From two winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, "who have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country's prosperity" "A wildly ambitious work that hopscotches through history and around the world to answer the very big question of why some countries get rich and others don't."--The New York Times FINALIST: Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award - ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Economist, BusinessWeek, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, The Plain Dealer Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, or geography that determines prosperity or poverty? As Why Nations Fail shows, none of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Drawing on fifteen years of original research, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is our man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it). Korea, to take just one example, is a remarkably homogenous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created those two different institutional trajectories. Acemoglu and Robinson marshal extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, among them: - Will China's economy continue to grow at such a high speed and ultimately overwhelm the West? - Are America's best days behind it? Are we creating a vicious cycle that enriches and empowers a small minority? "This book will change the way people think about the wealth and poverty of nations . . . as ambitious as Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel."--BusinessWeek

"The NBER Macroeconomics Annual" features theoretical and empirical contributions to the study of macroeconomics, addressing central issues within the discipline. These issues range from short-run macroeconomic fluctuations to international economic crises and long-run economic growth. Continuing in this tradition, "NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2010" contains six papers that each tackle an important area in macroeconomics and serve to advance discourse within the field. This volume offers papers that reflect upon a variety of topics, including the recent financial crisis and the response of economists, the causes of economic growth in Europe in the decades following World War II, the sources of product-level price rigidities, and the complex relationship between the US economy and rising oil prices.

"The NBER Macroeconomics Annual" provides a forum for important debates in contemporary macroeconomics and major developments in the theory of macroeconomic analysis and policy that include leading economists from a variety of fields. The papers and accompanying discussions in "NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009" address leverage cycles and how they can be driven by the interaction of heterogeneous beliefs and equilibrium leverage, the validity of alternative explanations of the recent increase in foreclosures on residential mortgages, the credit rating crisis, quantitative implications for the evolution of the U. S. wage distribution, and noisy business cycles.

Introduction to Modern Economic Growth is a groundbreaking text from one of today's leading economists. Daron Acemoglu gives graduate students not only the tools to analyze growth and related macroeconomic problems, but also the broad perspective needed to apply those tools to the big-picture questions of growth and divergence. And he introduces the economic and mathematical foundations of modern growth theory and macroeconomics in a rigorous but easy to follow manner. After covering the necessary background on dynamic general equilibrium and dynamic optimization, the book presents the basic workhorse models of growth and takes students to the frontier areas of growth theory, including models of human capital, endogenous technological change, technology transfer, international trade, economic development, and political economy. The book integrates these theories with data and shows how theoretical approaches can lead to better perspectives on the fundamental causes of economic growth and the wealth of nations. Innovative and authoritative, this book is likely to shape how economic growth is taught and learned for years to come. * Introduces all the foundations for understanding economic growth and dynamic macroeconomic analysis * Focuses on the big-picture questions of economic growth * Provides mathematical foundations * Presents dynamic general equilibrium * Covers models such as basic Solow, neoclassical growth, and overlapping generations, as well as models of endogenous technology and international linkages * Addresses frontier research areas such as international linkages, international trade, political economy, and economic development and structural change * An accompanying Student Solutions Manual containing the answers to selected exercises is available (978-0-691-14163-3/$24.95). See: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8970.html. * For Professors only: To access a complete solutions manual online, email us at: [email protected]