James Robinson on Why Nations Fail

elief in 'markets' among the financial elite at time can at time border on the theological, with approaches like the efficient market hypothesis or the invisible hand cited, unironically, as dogmas. But finance professor Alex Edmans of the London Business School would like to hav ...  Show more

Graffiti has a long pedigree, whether our starting point is the wall paintings of Lascaux, the carved crudities of Roman toilets or the G.I. inspired Kilroy of World War II's European theater. But Graffiti – notice our use of the capital G – and its focus on individual tags has a ...  Show more

How can the West learn from Africa? Professor James Robinson, director of The Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts, highlights the richness of development in the African region. Robinson has conducted extensive fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of ...  Show more

How do the histories of countries set up the greater context in which they become rich or poor?

Daron Acemoglu believes it boils down to whether or not they've been organized according to extractive or inclusive institutions.

He joins to di ...

Why do some nations fail and others succeed?In the late 1990s and early 2000s, three economists formed a partnership that would revolutionize how economists think about global inequality. Their work centered on a powerful — and almost radically obvious — idea: that the economic f ...  Show more

Economist Daron Acemoglu likes to tackle big questions. He tells Steve how colonialism still affects us today, who benefits from new technology, and why democracy wasn’t always a sure thing.