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Conversations with Tyler

Daron Acemoglu on the Struggle Between State and Society

Conversations with Tyler

Conversations with Tyler

Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2019

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What determines the economic, social, and political trajectories of nations? Why were settlers in colonies like Jamestown and Australia able to escape the extractive systems desired by their British masters, while colonial subjects in Barbados and Jamaica were not? In his latest book, Daron Acemoglu elevates the power of institutions over theories centering on human capital, culture, or geography. Institutions help strike the balance of power in the constant struggle between state and society, creating a 'narrow corridor' through which liberty and prosperity is achieved.

Daron joined Tyler for a conversation about drivers of economic growth, the economic causes and effects of democratization, how Germanic tribes introduced "bottom-up politics" to the Roman empire, the institutional reasons that China's state capacity and control has increased with its wealth, his predictions for the future of liberty in his birth country of Turkey, the biggest challenges currently facing the Middle East, what we can learn from the example of Lagos, why publishing in the "top five" is overrated, tips on motivating graduate students, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Recorded October 25th, 2019

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University,

0:08.3

bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems.

0:12.5

Learn more at mercatis.org.

0:15.2

And for more conversations, including videos, transcripts, and upcoming dates, visit

0:20.4

ConversationsWithTyler.com.

0:31.0

Hello. Today I'm here with Deroan Asimoglu, who of course is Professor of Economics at MIT.

0:36.6

By some measures, Deroan is the number one most widely cited economist in the whole world.

0:42.3

And he has a new book out with James A. Robinson called The Narrow Corridor, States,

0:47.5

Societies, and the Fate of Liberty. Welcome to our own.

0:50.3

Thanks Tyler. It's really a perfectly wonderful treasure to be here.

0:55.0

I have so many questions about economic growth. First, how much of the data on per capita income

1:00.2

is explained just simply by one variable, distance from the equator, and how good a theory of the

1:05.8

wealth of nations is that? I think it's not a particularly good theory.

1:10.4

If you look at the map of the world and color different countries according to their income per capita,

1:17.1

you'll see that a lot of low income per capita countries are around the equator,

1:22.1

and some of the richest countries are pretty far from the equator in the temperate areas.

1:26.6

So many people have jumped to the conclusion that there must be a causal link.

1:30.2

But actually, I think geographic factors are not a great explanatory framework for understanding

1:37.4

prosperity and poverty. But why does it have such a high or a square, or like by one measure,

1:42.3

the most antipodal 21% of the population produces 69% of the GDP, which is striking, right?

1:49.1

Is that just accident? Yeah, it's a bit of an accident. So essentially, if you think of which

1:54.8

are the countries around the equator that have such low income per capita, they are all former

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