Ideas or institutions? – a comment

Along with introducing democracy, advancing philosophy and excelling at the arts, during the period 800–300bceancient Greece achieved substantial economic prosperity. Recent literature attributes the efflorescence to the institutions and culture of democratic city-states. However, the city-states failed to initiate sustained growth. Technological progress remained slow and the economic efflorescence ended after the prevalence of Macedon and the subsequent Roman conquest. The present study scrutinises the roles of city-state institutions and culture. It shows that ultimately ancient Greece could not sustain long-run growth because a multitude of independent small city-states prevented the exploitation of economies of scale and stoked continual wars that exhausted them financially and militarily, and because of a culture valuing landholding, self-sufficiency and collectivist attitudes.

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The failure of ancient Greek growth: institutions, culture and energy cost

Tridimas

2018

“…The starting point is the argument that ideas influence institutions and that changes in both must be included in any coherent explanation of growth 6 . The best expressions of that starting point are found in Greif and Mokyr (2016, 2017), Langlois (2016), Tabellini (2016), and Weingast (2016). An important argument from that literature is that: we want to go beyond the generic statement that the world is complex and ideas matter.…”

Section: Ideas and Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We also want to identify which ideas and which cultural traits are important for economic development, how they change and how they interact with the economic environment. (Tabellini, 2016: 43)…”

Section: Ideas and Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The religious origins of the rule of law

Hill

2019

The background conditions for the emergence of the rule of law are important but underdeveloped. This paper discusses current theories of the origin of the rule of law, arguing that they are useful but incomplete. In addition to those theories, the Jewish and Christian concept of all human beings as God's image bearers is an important contributor to the rule of law in Western civilization. The formulation of universal human equality is not, however, a sufficient condition for the emergence of the rule of law. The concept has taken centuries of articulation in different institutions and social settings. It only reached full fruition when it was joined with an understanding of appropriate legal and political systems as expressed by political theorists such as Locke, Montesquieu, and Madison.

“…Paolo : ‘Max U versus Humanomics’ generated a challenging discussion with criticisms from leading scholars such as Greif and Mokyr (2016), Langlois (2016), Lawson (2016), and Tabellini (2016), and your concluding remarks ‘The humanities are scientific: a reply to the defenses of economic neo-institutionalism’ (McCloskey, 2016a). Is there anything in particular that you would like to retract or reconsider about that debate?…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond behaviorism, positivism, and neo-institutionalism in economics: a conversation with Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

McCloskey

Silvestri

2021

Silvestri interviews McCloskey about her forthcoming book, ‘Beyond Behaviorism, Positivism, and Neo-Institutionalism in Economics’, critical of recent economics, especially of neo-institutionalism. Neo-institutionalism uses the ugly character ‘Herr Max U’ as its central idea: the elevation of Prudence to the only virtue. Institutions are mainly intermediate, not ultimate, causes in society. Ethics, rhetoric, identity, ideology, and ideas matter. McCloskey's turn to defending liberalism is in the background of her critique of behaviorism, positivism, and neo-institutionalism as anti-liberal, reducing the analysis of people to a model of childish slaves. Liberalism is the theory of non-slave adults. Of the big ideas of the past few centuries, only liberalism treats people with suitable dignity, and permits them to have a go, and make others rich. Neo-institutionalism shares the two sins of modern Samuelsonian economics: a devotion of mere existence proofs; and a deviation to arbitrary tests of statistical ‘significance’. And in its tale of a rise of ‘capitalism’, it shares the errors of amateur economic history. The better word for the modern economic world of the Great Enrichment – fully 3,000% increases in real income per person – is ‘innovism’. Neo-institutionalism, as the method of historical economics, must be replaced by ‘Humanomics’.