A Farewell to Alms (eBook)

A Brief Economic History of the World

Gregory Clark (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2008
432 Seiten
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4008-2781-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Why are some parts of the world so rich and others so poor? Why did the Industrial Revolution--and the unprecedented economic growth that came with it--occur in eighteenth-century England, and not at some other time, or in some other place? Why didn't industrialization make the whole world rich--and why did it make large parts of the world even poorer? In A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark tackles these profound questions and suggests a new and provocative way in which culture--not exploitation, geography, or resources--explains the wealth, and the poverty, of nations. Countering the prevailing theory that the Industrial Revolution was sparked by the sudden development of stable political, legal, and economic institutions in seventeenth-century Europe, Clark shows that such institutions existed long before industrialization. He argues instead that these institutions gradually led to deep cultural changes by encouraging people to abandon hunter-gatherer instincts-violence, impatience, and economy of effort-and adopt economic habits-hard work, rationality, and education. The problem, Clark says, is that only societies that have long histories of settlement and security seem to develop the cultural characteristics and effective workforces that enable economic growth. For the many societies that have not enjoyed long periods of stability, industrialization has not been a blessing. Clark also dissects the notion, championed by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, that natural endowments such as geography account for differences in the wealth of nations. A brilliant and sobering challenge to the idea that poor societies can be economically developed through outside intervention, A Farewell to Alms may change the way global economic history is understood.

Autor

Gregory Clark is chair of the economics department at the University of California, Davis. He has written widely about economic history.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 29.12.2008
• Reihe/Serie: The Princeton Economic History of the Western World
• Reihe/Serie: The Princeton Economic History of the Western World
• Zusatzinfo: 25 halftones. 78 line illus. 65 tables.
• Verlagsort: Princeton
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Mikrosoziologie
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Volkswirtschaftslehre
• Schlagworte: Adult • agrarian society • Agriculture • Agriculture (Chinese mythology) • An Essay on the Principle of Population • bequest • birth rate • Capitalism • Capital Market • Child Mortality • Competition • Competition (economics) • consumer • Consumption (Economics) • cotton mill • Currency • debt • Demography • Depreciation • developed country • Douglass North • Economic Growth • Economic History • Economic history of the world • Economic Inequality • Economic Rent • Economics • economist • economy • Efficiency • Employment • Expense • fertility • Great Divergence • Household • Human Capital • Hunter-Gatherer • Incentive • income • income distribution • industrialisation • Industrial Revolution • Industry • infanticide • Inflation • Institution • Interest Rate • International Monetary Fund • Investment • laborer • Life Expectancy • Literacy • living wage • Malthusian Trap • Manufacturing • Market Economy • Market Value • Measures of national income and output • mortality rate • Neolithic revolution • Output (economics) • Paleolithic • Payment • percentage • Physical Capital • population density • Population Growth • Poverty • Power loom • Productivity • Quantity • Rate of return • raw material • Real Income • Real interest rate • real wages • Return on Capital • Social Class • Society • standard of living • Stock • Supply (economics) • tariff • Tax • Tax Rate • Technological Change • Technology • textile industry • Thomas Robert Malthus • time preference • Total Fertility Rate • Upper Class • urbanization • usury • wage • Wealth • Working Time • World Economy • World Population • year
• ISBN-10: 1-4008-2781-7 / 1400827817
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4008-2781-7 / 9781400827817