BOOK · [128]
A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World
Economic History
Clark argues that England's Industrial Revolution emerged because centuries of higher fertility among the wealthy gradually spread bourgeois values—patience, literacy, non-violence—through the population by cultural or genetic means. The thesis is deliberately provocative; it reframes the standard factor-endowments explanation with a long-run human capital argument. Directly relevant to Collison's interest in why growth happened where and when it did.
Endorsed By
1 PERSON-
Patrick Collison
On the shelf alongside Gordon and Deaton as part of a cluster of economic history books Collison reads to understand why growth is hard and rare.