[책: Acemoglu & Robinson's] Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (2012)

출처: Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson (2012). Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Crown Publishers.

자료: 구글도서

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※ 주요 차례

Preface (1)

Why Egyptians filled Tahrir Square to bring down Hosni Mubarak and what it means for our understanding of the causes of prosperity and poverty

1. So Close and Yet So Differently (7)

Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora, have the same people, culture, and geography. Why is one rich and one poor?

2. Theories That Don't Work (45)

Poor countries are poor not because of their geographies or cultures, or because their leaders do not know which policies will enrich their citizens

3. The Making of Prosperity and Poverty (70)

How prosperity and poverty are determined by incentives created by institutions, and how policies determines what institutions a nation has

4. Small Differences and Critical Junctures: The Weight of History (96)

How institutions change through political conflict and how the past shapes the present

5. "I've Seen the Future, and It Works": Growth under Extractive Institutions (124)

What Stalin, King Shyaam, the Neolithic Revolution, and the Maya city-states all had in common and how this explains why China's current economic growth cannot last.

6. Drifting Apart (152)

How institutions evolve over time, often slowly drifting apart

7. The Turning Point (182)

How a political revolution in 1688 changed institutions in England and led to the Industrial Revolution

8. Not on Our True: Barriers to Development (213)

Why the politically powerful in many nations opposed the Industrial Revolution

9. Reversing Development (245)

How European colonialism impoverished large parts of the world

10. The Diffusion of Prosperity (274)

How some parts of the world took different paths to prosperity from that of Britain

11. The Virtuous Circle (302)

How institutions that encourage prosperity create positive feedback loops that prevent the efforts by elites to undermine them

12. The Vicious Circle (335)

How institutions that create poverty generate negative feedback loops and endure

13. Why Nations Fail Today (368)

Institutions, institutions, institutions

14. Breaking the Mold (404)

How a few countries changed their economic trajectory by changing their institutions

15. Understanding Prosperity and Poverty (428)

How the world could have been different and how understanding this can explain why most attempts to combat poverty have failed

16 Acknowledgments (463)

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※ 발췌 (excerpts):

Preface

This book is about the huge differences in incomes and standards of living that separate the rich countries of the world, such as the US, Great Britain, and Germany, from the poor, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, and South Asia.

As we write this preace, North Africa and the Middle East have been shaken by the "Arab Spring" started by the so-called Jasmine Revolution, which was initially ignited by public outrage over the self-immolation of a street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, on December 17, 2010. By January 14, 2011, President Zine El Abidine Bel Ali, who had ruled Tunisia since 1987, had stepped down, but far from abating, the revolutionary fervor against the rule of privileged elites in Tunisia was getting stronger and had already spread to the rest of the Middle East. Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled Egypt with a tight grip for almost thirty years, was ousted on February 11, 2011. The fates of the regimes in Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen are unknown as we complete this preface.

The roots of discontent in these countries lie in their poverty. The average Egyptian has an income level of around 12% of the average citizen of the US and can expect to live ten fewer years; 20% of the population is in dire poverty. Though these differences are significant, they are actually quite small compared with those between the US and the poorest countries in the world, such as North Korea, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe, where well over half the population lives in poverty.

Why is Egypt so much poorer than the US? What are the constraints that keep Egyptians from becoming more prosperous? Is the poverty of Egypt immutable, or can it be eradicated? A natural way to start thinking about this is to look at what the Egyptians themselves ae saying about the problems they face and why they rose up against the Mubarak regime. ( ... ... )

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