Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

Why Nations Fail is a brilliant and compelling book that provides a solution to the age-old issue of why some nations are wealthy and others impoverished, split by riches and poverty, health and illness, and food and famine.

Is it location, the weather, or culture? Maybe a lack of knowledge about appropriate policies?

Just put, no. None of these elements are final or predetermined. If so, how else would one explain the rapid growth of Botswana when other African countries like Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone are engulfed in conflict and poverty?

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson provide compelling evidence that the foundation of economic success—or failure—is human-made political and economic institutions. For instance, Korea is a very homogenous country, yet the people in North Korea are among the world's poorest, while their South Korean counterparts are among the wealthiest. This is just one of many amazing instances. The South developed a civilization that facilitated economic opportunity for everyone, praised creativity, and established incentives. Due to the government's increased accountability and responsiveness to the general public and citizenry, the economic prosperity that was therefore sparked was maintained. Sadly, there is no end in sight to the decades of starvation, political persecution, and drastically different economic structures that the people of the north have had to suffer. The politics that produced these radically diverse institutional trajectories are the cause of the divisions between the Koreas.

Using extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa, Acemoglu and Robinson, based on fifteen years of original research, construct a new theory of political economy that is highly relevant for today's big questions, including: - China has created a growth engine that is autocratic. Will it keep expanding so quickly and take over the West? . Are the finest days in America over? Are we transitioning from a constructive cycle where elites' attempts to consolidate their power are thwarted to a destructive one that benefits and strengthens a tiny minority? . What is the best strategy for assisting billions of people to escape the cycle of poverty and achieve prosperity? More generosity from the affluent Western countries? or picking up the hard-learned lessons from the ground-breaking theories of Acemoglu and Robinson about the interaction of inclusive political and economic institutions?

Your perspective on and comprehension of the world will be altered by Why Nations Fail.