Podcasts about Great Divergence

Christopher Isett joins me to discuss the rise of capitalism and "The Great Divergence," in which Christendom transformed itself from an obscure corner of the world into the dominant global power. Just how did that happen, what part did capitalism play in it, and why did capitalism develop in Europe? And what does China have to do with all of it?Chris gives his answers to all of these questions, especially drawing on the work of Robert Brenner. Here's Brenner's page on the Verso website, if you want the full story: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/authors/brenner-robert

Following the success of last year's ⁠What About China ⁠-trilogy, I'm delighted to introduce a two-part series on the economic history of India. This series examines the origins of modern India by focusing on politics, poverty, and the experience of ordinary Indians from 1600 till today.The first episode covers the decline of the Mughals and the hugely controversial rule of the British East India Company and, later, the British Crown.One thing is clear: Most Indians lived in poverty when the British left. So, how much of Indian poverty was due to British policies? How much was shaped by deeper trends? And what should we make of those infamous railways?To tackle these questions, I'm joined by Bishnupriya Gupta, a professor of economics at the University of Warwick and one of the world's leading historians of the Indian economy. Her new book, ⁠An Economic History of India⁠, provides a uniquely objective and data-driven exploration of India's history, focusing on the well-being of ordinary people.In this episode, we discuss:Indian vs English living standards in 1600 / The impact of British colonialism on India's economy / The Great Famines of Bengal / What both imperial apologists and Indian nationalists get wrong about the British rule. In the end, Gupta also explains why Mahatma Gandhi's education might be a clue as to why India lagged behind East Asia in the 20th Century. Enjoy — and stay tuned for Part II on the era of Independence!MENTIONSBooks: An Economic History of India by Bishnupriya Gupta; The Great Divergence by Kenneth Pomerantz; Other scholars: Stephen Broadberry | Prasannan Parthasarathy | Nico Voigtländer & Hans-Joachim Voth | Indrajit Ray | Oded Galor (see episodes #12 and #13) On Humans episode: What About China (with Yasheng Huang, #44-46); Birth of Modern Prosperity (with Daron Acemoglu; Oded Galor, Brad DeLong; Branko Milanovic, after #40) Keywords: Mughal India | British colonialism | British Rad | East India Company | Indian nationalism | Indian deindustrialisation | Cotton trade | Indian railways | Primary vs higher education | Great Bengali faminesLINKSRead more at ⁠⁠⁠OnHumans.Substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. You can also find On Humans on ⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠BlueSky⁠⁠!Feeling generous? Join the wonderful group of my patrons at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠or get in touch for other ways to support!Email: ⁠⁠makela dot ilari at outlook dot com⁠⁠⁠

Warum ist Europa viel reicher als der Rest der Welt? Um diese Frage zu beantworten reisen wir in dieser Folge zurück in die Geschichte der Industriellen Revolution.  Es erklärt der Historiker Andreas Resch.Andreas Resch ist Historiker an der Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien. ***Drei Buchtipps von Andreas Resch:A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy von Joel MokyrThe British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective von Robert AllenGreat Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy von Kenneth Pomeranz***Weiterführende Links zum InterviewAdam Smith und die Nadelfabrik (Arbeitsteilung)David Ricardo und sein komparativer Kostenvorteil, einfach erklärtDie Studie zu Bangladesch, die Andreas zitiert hat: Manufacturing growth and the lives of Bangladeshi womenDie Erfolge Indiens bei der Armutsbekämpfung kann man etwa bei der Brookings Institution nachlesenÜber die Wichtigkeit von Institutionen hat etwa Joel Mokyr geschrieben: The Institutional Origins of the Industrial RevolutionDouglass North hat den Nobelpreis für seine Arbeit zu Institutionen gewonnen. Seine Rede hier ist eine gute EinführungRobert Allen über die Spinning Jenny: The Industrial Revolution in Miniature: The Spinning Jenny in Britain, France, and India.Die Arbeit von Acemoglu, die angesprochen wurde: The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change and Economic GrowthNoch eine ganz zentrale, einflussreiche Arbeit von Acemoglu: The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical InvestigationPeer Vries: The California School and Beyond: How to Study the Great Divergence?Jan de Vries: The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution  ***Erklär mir die Welt hilft dir dabei, die Welt besser zu verstehen. Hilf wie 370+ andere Hörer:innen mit, den Podcast zu finanzieren. Danke an alle Unterstützer:innen! ***So kannst du noch mithelfen Schick uns deine Fragen und Wünsche für EpisodenErzähl uns von dir! Mach bei der Hörer:innen-Befragung mit ***Du willst mehr?Bewirb dich als Hörer:in des MonatsHol dir Updates zum Podcast per WhatsApp, Newsletter, Telegram oder SignalFolge uns bei Tiktok, Instagram und FacebookQuatsche mit anderen Hörer:innen auf DiscordAlle Folgen ab Mai 2023 gibt es mit Video auf YouTubeSchau im Merch-Shop vorbeiHier kannst du Werbung im Podcast buchenAndreas' Buch "Alles gut?!" darüber, was er im Kampf gegen Armut auf der Welt beitragen kann ***Das Team:Mitarbeit: Sidonie SagmeisterVermarktung: Missing LinkAudio Production: Audio Funnel Video Production: DomotionLogo: Florian HalbmayrMusik: Something Elated by Broke For Free, CC BYBeatbox am Ende: Azad Arslantas

Since the dawn of retail energy competition a quarter century ago, various factions pro and con have engaged in a "battle of the statistics" (as former FERC Commissioner Bill Massey termed it in Episode 1 of this season) regarding the benefits that consumers – particularly residential customers – obtain from competition in retail electricity service. Mostly, these statistical arguments have centered around price savings that residential consumers may or may not have obtained from having a competitive choice in energy suppliers.In this episode, we hear from Constellation Energy's Rich Spilky, who on behalf of the Retail Energy Supply Association breaks down for us the body of RESA-sponsored work by the late former Illinois utility regulator Phil O'Connor that objectively sought to identify the consumer benefits of customer choice over time, with the price data adjusted for inflation. Spilky assisted O'Connor in these data analyses, which sought to objectively identify which states had effective retail energy competition, and to use federal government statistics to compare the performance of those retail choice states against that of states that retained traditional monopoly price regulation.The results have been compelling. For both studies that Spilky assisted O'Connor in preparing – Restructuring Recharged and The Great Divergence – as well as in the analyses that Spilky has conducted independently since, this objective methodology has shown that electricity consumers in the 14 jurisdictions with effective customer choice have generally experienced downward price trends while their counterparts without choice in monopoly states have generally experienced upward price trends. The analyses clearly show "there's something good going on in the competitive states, pricewise and cost-containmentwise, that's not happening in the monopoly states," Spilky says.  "I think it's remarkable."Support the show

Your morning briefing, the business news you need in just 15 minutes. On today's podcast:(1) Europe's central bankers are in no hurry to join the US pivot toward interest-rate cuts: the Bank of England kept interest rates at a 15-year high, sticking with its message that borrowing costs will remain elevated for some time despite growing bets on a wave of cuts in 2024. And European Central Bank policymakers are largely united in expecting to cut interest rates later than financial markets currently anticipate, according to officials familiar with their thinking. (2) Hungary has blocked a new 50-billion-euro EU financial aid package for Ukraine. (3) China's central bank has injected a record amount of cash into the economy.  (4) Citigroup Inc. will shutter its municipal business, one of the most dramatic moves yet by Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser as she seeks to squeeze better returns out of the Wall Street giant.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Teaching Pastor Stephen Bramer continues our series, "Jesus in Jerusalem". This message in the series is titled "The Great Divergence" and covers Mark 14:17-52. Originally preached at Waterbrook Bible Fellowship on Sunday, October 8, 2023.

The S&P 500 has performed very well in 2023, but market internals paint a less healthy picture. Confluence Staff Economist Thomas Wash joins us to discuss the stock market's uneven performance so far this year and what this may portend.

This week, Philip Pilkington is hammering a term he claims will soon be everywhere: "The Great Divergence". What becomes of the global balance of power when, as seems likely in 2023, there is simultaneously a recession in the West, and a boom in the East? It's never happened before. So how will we learn to live on a two speed planet? Meanwhile, the chip ban has failed. Touted only months ago as a major new plank in Biden foreign policy, the figures are now in: the only real impact has been to allow China to dominate the Russian semiconductor market. Trade, like life, finds a way. But didn't we already know this? As the duo point out, it holds lessons for economists, who seem ever-more off their brief since the pandemic. Finally, suave technocrat Tony Blair has decided that the West needs to combat rival poles like Russia and China, as they gobble up influence in Africa. The democratic powers seem to be on the back foot, but as Andrew Collingwood points out, given Africa's long-standing instability, the route to influence is anything but straightforward. On this continent at least, coups will continue to dominate the great game...

Another podcast, another Metropolitan movie reference. This time we are joined by our colleague and friend, Taisu Zhang, Professor of Law at Yale Law School. We give you a sneak peak of Professor Zhang's new book The Ideological Foundations of Qing Taxation: Belief Systems, Politics, and Institutions, which comes out in November. Taisu starts by explaining why understanding the Qing dynasty is a prerequisite to understanding the modern era of Chinese history and modern Chinese politics. We then debate theories of the Great Divergence, or why many countries in the Western world emerged as the most powerful economies in the 19th and 20th centuries while Qing China, Mughal India, and others failed to launch. Taisu argues that the absence of the Chinese fiscal state and agricultural taxes led to a military and economic decline because of a lack of state investment. He also argues that the Qing dynasty was wrong to assume that agricultural taxes would lead to rebellion, pointing to similar taxation elsewhere in the world. As we love to do here at Digging a Hole, we also took a step back to think about broader methodological and institutional questions. First, Sam and Taisu discuss humanist and social science approaches to history and causal arguments. Taisu intentionally makes his work structured, clear, and empirically falsifiable, putting it against most causal theories of Chinese fiscal decline, which are done by economists. Second, David jumps in to ask whether the broader question here is about institutions. Can divergence be explained by excessive centralization in the Qing government or the role of underdeveloped financial markets? In addition, we delve in constitutional questions and interrogate whether Qing China had a constitutional system and the role that system played. Referenced Readings The Ideological Foundations of Qing Taxation: Belief Systems, Politics, and Institutions, by Taisu Zhang The Laws and Economics of Confucianism: Kinship and Property in Pre-Industrial China and England, by Taisu Zhang

The effects of the pandemic have varied greatly between developed and emerging countries, with the latter generally having difficulty managing the health crisis due to much more limited fiscal and monetary capabilities, and more difficulties accessing vaccinations. The recovery is also very uneven, even more so within the "emerging bloc" where situations are very diverse. In many countries, particularly among the less developed, the crisis will have a lasting impact and the scars will take time to fade. Will the Covid-19 pandemic signal the end of the convergence process as we have known it since the end of the 20th century? Will we return to the "Great Divergence"? Speakers: Xavier Durand, CEO, Coface Thomas Gomart, Director, Ifri - French Institute of International Relations  Pascal Minault, Chairman and CEO, Bouygues Construction Tania Sollogoub, Economist, Crédit Agricole Group Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many in Asian banking players assumed the sector would take a devastating knock. But two years on, it's apparent that banks have mostly come through in good shape, with relatively minor losses. Still, the financial ecosystem has changed irrevocably in this time. With rising interest rates, and the rapid uptake of digital tech, traditional banks and specialists alike face new challenges and opportunities—even as their operations diverge. Join the conversation with Chris Wright, the Asia editor of Euromoney; Joyce Moullakis, Senior Banking Reporter at The Australian newspaper; and Joydeep Sengupta, Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company. Read more > Listen to the podcast (duration: 38:27) >

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many in Asian banking players assumed the sector would take a devastating knock. But two years on, it's apparent that banks have mostly come through in good shape, with relatively minor losses. Still, the financial ecosystem has changed irrevocably in this time. With rising interest rates, and the rapid uptake of digital tech, traditional banks and specialists alike face new challenges and opportunities—even as their operations diverge. Join the conversation with Chris Wright, the Asia editor of Euromoney; Joyce Moullakis, Senior Banking Reporter at The Australian newspaper; and Joydeep Sengupta, Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

in this episode, Luke and Eleanor discuss a bunch of events that should've remained localized but, due to new technology, colonialism, and more, became huge events that changed the history of the entire human race. we talked about how the 30 Years' War led to the Peace of Westphalia, which directly led to World War 1. then we talk about internal Chinese politics that had massive global implications and helped spur on the Great Divergence. check it out! also: this is our 50th episode and we're so excited to keep doing them, thanks for listening!

So many Starseeds are opting OUT of their mission right now. Times are tough, I get it. But since you're here, listening to this, I'm going to assume you're IN.So what's next? Initiation. You're no longer a starseed, Starseed. Seeds grow into fully grown plants, flowers and trees; Starseeds grow into fully awakened Galactic Beings. You just need the steps to get there.Step 1 - Identity: Who are you? When will you own it?Step 2 - Purpose: What drives you? Where are you going?Step 3 - Mission: How will you get there? Why does it matter?Though exploring these three initiations, you can become the fully incarnated Galactic you are on a comic level - right here on Earth.Mission accepted? Dimensional ShifterRedditDiscordYouTube (CC)

Joydeep Sengupta, senior partner at McKinsey, explains how unlike the previous economic crisis, this time banks did not witness any abnormal losses, material capital calls, or “white knight” acquisitions. But the outlook for the industry remains clouded with half of banks not covering their cost of equity.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello Interactors,This is the last full week of fall and so the last episode on economic geography. Happy early winter solstice everyone. Soon we in the North start tilting toward the sun. I’ve learned a ton this season and hope you have too. Today I conclude with a summarization of the history and effects of capitalism as we know it today and offer a glimpse at alternatives. We like easy answers to hard problems, but I’m here to tell you it’s messy and complex. And that’s just the good stuff.As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.Please leave your comments below or email me directly.Now let’s go…THE URGENCY OF CRYPTOCURRENCYCryptocurrency was trending as a topic again this fall. It spiked in October. I still see residual evidence of this in my social media feeds where debates rage on over whether it’s a legitimate form of currency or just a speculator’s delight.Cryptocurrency was invented to circumvent the juggernaut that banks, governments, and credit card companies hold on the currency market. But the more it gets legitimized as an alternative currency, the more interested these traditional institutions become. For example, one form of cryptocurrency rising in popularity are stablecoins. It’s a digital currency that can be converted into ‘real’ money and is issued by the very institutions the inventors were hoping to circumvent. It seems there is no escaping Western economic dominance.Money in the U.S. is commonly believed to come from the government, but most greenbacks issued today come from banks. They order currency from the Federal Reserve based on public demand which is then put into general circulation – which is growing worldwide. In fact, there are more U.S. dollars circulating outside of the U.S. than in it. Much of which is used by people struggling financially around the globe.Meanwhile, those not struggling are using cash less and less. Recently, some New York retailers even attempted to go cashless. It prompted the city to pass a law requiring food establishments to accept cash or face a $1,000 fine.Still, increasingly we see people paying for items with their phone. In this digital, post-cash society it’s easy to imagine an alternative virtual currency sneaking in. If our democracy can be challenged, why not our currency? A recent New York Times article by Peter Coy on the slipping grip of cash notes that “Some economists believe there is a risk that we’ll someday find ourselves with nothing that is universally accepted as a medium of exchange.” He goes on to remind us that is was Socrates who “originated the concept of a noble lie, which is a myth that elites propagate for what they view as the good of the public.” He then quotes Michael Dorf of the Cornell Law School who believes “the solidity of money is one such lie.”The truth is, alternative currencies and economies exist all around us and have for centuries. For example, in a district of central London call Brixton, where David Bowie once lived, shops no longer accept the British Pound. Instead they take an alternative currency called the Brixton Pound that features a picture of Bowie on a paper bill that is as nicely designed and proportioned as Bowie himself.It’s been in circulation since 2009 and 250 area shops accept it. Workers in Brixton also get paid with it and you can even settle your utility bills with it. It’s a hyper-local monetary scheme that incentivizes local residents to shop local, buy local, and live local. The Brixton Pound has inspired cities across the UK to do the same and now Bristol, Cardiff, Hull, Liverpool, and Plymouth all have their own alternative local currencies.Many schemes like this exist outside of the Western world too – and they’re often not tied to the dominant currency system. For example, there’s a settlement on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya called Bangladesh. Not to be confused with the country of Bangladesh. It was named after an early settler who unexpectedly packed up and moved to Bangladesh never to return. The area was hence called Bangladesh. It’s a poor informal settlement made of self-made homes and little to no infrastructure, yet is home to over 20,000 people. They work at nearby industries at the fringe of Nairobi doing odd jobs regularly paid workers refuse to do.Many are well educated, but work is intermittent and there are more qualified workers than there are jobs. It leads to extreme poverty, apathy, and strife. One local teacher in the Peace Corps, Will Ruddick, became frustrated that he was graduating kids with no where to go. He said many of whom were more skilled academically than many he’d witnessed at Stanford. Ruddick happens to also have a PhD in econophysics – a branch of economics that draws inspiration from the field of physics. He began wondering how he could devise a way for residents in areas like Bangladesh to earn consistent wages doing meaningful work in their community. He wanted ways for them to create and share in their abundance, take charge of their own livelihoods, and build a self-sustaining economic future.So in 2010 he launched an alternative local currency experiment called Eco-Pesa in three informal settlements in Kenya. That experiment became permanent in Bangladesh with the creation of their own currency; the Bangla-Pesa. Unlike the Brixton Pound, this alternative currency can’t be exchanged for the national Kenyan currency. It’s a closed system of money creation that serves one purpose: support a shared willingness among community members to accept and trade money in exchange for goods and services.It has over 2000 members and 220 businesses and has helped fill the settlement with money, eliminate market instability brought on by outside nationalistic forces, provide opportunities for investment, and grow Bangladesh businesses that generate jobs.  He went on to found Grass Roots Economics which is a resource and platform that supports and inspires experiments like his. The platform has launched seven different forms of local currency in poverty stricken informal settlements across Africa, including two in South Africa and one in Congo. Last year the Red Cross leveraged the organization to establish more local currencies during Covid helping to grow the number of registered users of local currencies to over 50,000 people. Ruddick sees no reason why it can’t continue to scale regionally and even nationally. Maybe even across the second largest continent in the world. And he has the track record and models to substantiate his claim.GREAT DIVIDE; WHITE PRIDEThe primary obstacle to such schemes taking hold too pervasively is the default global capitalocentric economic system of the West; a scheme that relies on places like Bangladesh to perpetuate its dominance. It’s a form of power and control that has existed since the spread of European colonialism starting in the 1400s.Europe had yet to be introduced to capitalism. Which means, contrary to popular belief, they didn’t invent it. There’s now ample research pointing to evidence of capitalist trade and profit already occurring across Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Folks like Christopher Columbus would have tripped over these capitalist trade routes as he stumbled his way upon their shores. In fact, it’s more likely European colonial scouts like Columbus were in the untenable position of trying to convince these well established economies that they should allow lowly Europeans to even participate in their capitalistic schemes.The Ming dynasty in China and the Mughal Empire of South Asia would have been two of the more established world centers of economics at the time. Medieval Europe, in comparison, would have looked primitive and backwards by their standards. But over the course of centuries, the Europeans managed to disrupt (often violently) existing capital structures creating what has been called the Great Divergence – a socioeconomic shift in balance to the West.Just how ‘great’ it was is a matter of perspective, of course. To Amer-Europeans it was great. I certainly grew up learning that. I was taught Europeans were fortunate geographically, gifted intellectually, and superior culturally. Their ‘enlightened’ selves rose above the paltry ills of feudal medievalism to erase an embarrassing historical stain. Their inventiveness gave rise to free and fair democracy and capitalism that eventually spread from America’s sea to shining sea. Not so fast.A new book by Anthropologists David Graeber and David Wengrow show compelling evidence that it was actually a visit from the Native American (Huron-Wendat) statesman, Kandiaronk, who planted the seeds of ‘enlightenment’ with European philosophers in his eloquent and observant criticism of European ways. Here is a fragment of a speech he delivered to a group of French philosophers and statesmen in 1703:“I have spent six years reflecting on the state of European society and I still can’t think of a single way they act that’s not inhuman, and I genuinely think this can only be the case, as long as you stick to your distinctions of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’. I affirm that what you call money is the devil of devils; the tyrant of the French, the source of all evils; the bane of souls and slaughterhouse of the living. To imagine one can live in the country of money and preserve one’s soul is like imagining one could preserve one’s life at the bottom of a lake. Money is the father of luxury, lasciviousness, intrigues, trickery, lies, betrayal, insincerity, – of all the world’s worst behaviour. Fathers sell their children, husbands their wives, wives betray their husbands, brothers kill each other, friends are false, and all because of money. In the light of all this, tell me that we Wendat are not right in refusing to touch, or so much as to look at silver?”The heart of Kondiaronk’s critique is what fueled the ‘great divergence.’ Their ‘slaughterhouse of the living’ is what disrupted existing Asian economic dominance. It wasn’t ‘enlightenment’ but well documented, practiced, and executed forms of slavery, racism, and war-instigated establishment of European controlled capitalism. They re-centered economic activity around themselves through force, but convinced themselves, and others to this day, that their actions were justified. The British and American economic geography professor, Eric Sheppard, from UCLA puts it like this:“The stories Europeans told themselves, and imposed on others, amounted to a self justification of their role as a uniquely civilizing force, marginalizing the colonized (from Ireland to India and the Belgian Congo) as less-than-civilized, in order to justify their less than-human treatment by self-described liberals.”In the late 1800s, after the U.S. slaughtered 3,000 Filipinos as part of an overnight raid in the colonization of their land, America’s favorite poet at the time, Rudyard Kipling, wrote a poem that emblemizes the racist, violent, and self-justified imperialistic sentiment of the time:Take up the White Man’s burden— Send forth the best ye breed— Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need; To wait in heavy harness,On fluttered folk and wild— Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.It was published in the New York Tribune, New York Sun, and San Francisco Examiner. It was also loved by President Theodore Roosevelt who sent a copy of it to his close friend and Massachusetts politician, Henry Lodge, with a note that read:“Rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view.”Capitalism is rooted in racism and its emergence was tied to the colonization of captured territories over seas through militaristic invasions. By the time Roosevelt was putting it in practice in the U.S., it was a centuries old well-oiled machine. The rights of European territories to claim sovereignty and organize captured territories first emerged in Europe after the signing of the Treaty of Westfalia in 1648. After 80 years of European territorial and religious wars, this peace treaty forced the Holy Roman Empire to divvy out sovereign states (countries) across Europe and allowed them to also choose their own official religions.This event coincided with the emergence of political economists in Scotland, England, and France who had been debating and writing socioeconomic theories for years. Especially after the visit from Kondiaronk. They seized the opportunity to imbue their concepts with a secular vision that allowed capitalism to thrive between diverse European countries, and religions, for their mutual benefit. One such economic theory to eventually emerge was Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand.’With a European model of economic abstraction established, it was then tied to government controlled nation-state territories. It was a no-brainer to replicate this model for any remote territory conquered, bartered, and stolen overseas. And just like that, global colonization had taken hold. The emergence of the great divergence.It is from this confluence of events that the Western educated world has come to believe capitalism as conceived in the minds of Enlightened European thinkers. And because they self-justified themselves as intellectually and spiritually superior to other races and religions, including Kondiaronk, they believed, and we’ve been taught, that the European colonial and capitalistic expansion was for the good of humanity.But let’s be honest, this is fantasy. And it’s dangerous to abstract away capitalism from the real and documented horrors of racism, slavery, rape, persecution, theft, exploitation, and extermination that allows it to flourish to this day. It shouldn’t be sanitized as a ‘great divergence.’ It should be chastised as a hate insurgence.With the rise of Trumpism we are witnessing the sheen of capitalist oriented racism shining through decades of opaque but fading layers of failed attempts and promises of liberty and justice for all. And it’s in the spirit of domineering nationalists taking up Kipling’s distant, but misguided, call to accept the ‘White Man’s burden.’ And how much better is the Biden administration when kids captured at the border under Trump still remain in cages like ‘new-caught, sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child.’ In the words of Kondiaronk, “the world’s worst behaviour.”Both the left and the right, who are still smarting from Covid supply chain woes and wringing their hands over increasing inflation, are both viewing the global economic juggernaut their parties helped to construct with suspect for the first time. They’re not alone. Every country in the world is scrambling to reconsider their local economy as it relates to Western capitalistic global domination. No wonder the world is suffering a collective anxiety attack.DON’T CRINGE AT THE FRINGEWe are witnessing an array of identity crisis across the socio-political spectrum. From far right nationalistic white-supremacy authoritarianism to the far left hopes of reconstituting socialist theories of idealized utopias. Both of which are different forms of top-down autocratic attempts at organizing social order and economies – one through neoliberal capitalistic oligarchies and the other through socialistic governmental central control. And because our poor human brains are attracted to binary polars, seek simple answers, and loath the messy middle, we suffer.Meanwhile, fringe experiments in alternative economic schemes continue to flourish as they always have. But some encroach on the establishment more than others. And one in particular operates at a scale big enough to challenge the West’s strangle hold on global economics – China. China’s global Belt and Road Initiative, while China-centric, is also undeniably globally inclusive.They have been dispersing their investments in infrastructure and commodity creation and extraction in a myriad of countries – big and small, rich and poor – around the world since 2013. At home they operate a hybrid Socialist and Capitalist government that then orchestrates attempts at controlling a global economy. If a hybridist socioeconomic experiment is seriously challenging the default world economy of the last 50-60 years, shouldn’t the U.S. and Europe consider conducting experiments of their own? Or has hubris and denial taken too strong of a hold? Only history will tell.It’s safe to say that the days of claiming Western style capitalism and U.S. exceptionalism have been exposed and debunked. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” has come into the light and it’s empty. And the neoliberal free market economy is anything but free and has financially imprisoned millions for decades. Also gone are the Eurocentric interpretations of history. It’s time we stop insisting that the capitalistic scheme dominating the world today, while not perfect, is the least-bad option and therefore every country must adopt it. It’s rhetoric like this that the global North uses to twist the arms of the poorer global South to align them with their socio-political and economic agenda.  Our beloved binary brains, again, are attracted to global North versus global South battles of theories and victories. The same can be said of East versus West. But most countries caught in this polarization have their own theories, some invented, and some borrowed or influenced – good or bad – by centuries of globalization, education, and financing from the global North. It’s no fun, but we need to wrestle with the messy middle.We in the West are so trained to assess and judge other geographies, cultures, and economies from our ivory towers of exceptionalism – as if surveying a globe from a godly perch – labeling, cataloging, and objectifying human and non-human entities, that we forget the interaction of people and place. As the late great economist, Herb Simon, says, (as illustrated on my about page)Those folks in Kenya stand at the fringe of a global economic system that either ignores them, exploits them, or starves them to death. It’s what it means to be marginalized. But with the help of a friend, they are discovering their plight is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which they find themselves. They have found a way to stand up, recognize and accept the apparent complexity, and act out of respect for each other’s position relative to one another…and the selfish globalized economic apparatus that put them there.Professor Sheppard concludes that he and his Western educated colleagues, “suffer from a particular set of geographical blinders.” He says, “they look at our world in ways that normalize the European perspective on how development happens.” It’s a perspective he’s critical of because it’s a model of economic geography that “fails to deliver on its promise of development for all, everywhere.”He goes on to offer that because Western style capitalism relies on “uneven and asymmetric connectivities” that end up “driving uneven geographical development”, we’ve arrived at a place where the dominant global economic scheme of globalization has failed “at scales ranging from the globe to the neighbourhood.”To help combat his own implicit bias, he planted himself in Jakarta to do his research. “Thinking through Jakarta”, he says, “the raggedy fringes that matter are the hybridity of Indonesia’s political economy, informality and biophysical processes.” Instead of hypothesizing over concepts or proselytizing projects from the canons of capitalism, he’s asking that we recognize, as those in Bangladesh and Brixton did, that “relations with Capitalism are crucial to understanding how” emerging alternative economies embedded on the insides of dominant systems “coevolves with its outsides.”Instead of propagating or placating a dominant global economy, what if we acknowledge, embrace, fertilize, understand, celebrate, and experience alternative economies embedded within or on the fringe of the establishment. After all, these are economies that have been forged through the interaction of people and place whose shared histories have, as Sheppard says, “found them encountering, rather than propagating, Capitalist economic development.”Cryptocurrency is likely to trend again. Our anxiety has us looking for easy answers and social media likes shiny technocratic objects. Meanwhile, I’m rooting for Will Ruddick and his grass roots economies. A humane form of reciprocity that even the brilliant, eloquent, and enlightened Kondiaronk would recognize. And maybe even support. Subscribe at interplace.io

History is not a single continuum. There are certain stretches in which momentous change occurs in a very compact timeframe. The forty-year period between 1490 and 1530 is one of these bursts of revolutionary change. In The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World, Patrick Wyman, a historian and the host of the popular podcast Tides of History, argues that the turn of the 16th century was a momentous moment in history when Europe began to break off from the rest of the world and “became recognizably the global power,” ushering in the era of imperialism and colonialism – “the central problem of world history in the last 500 years.” Rather than studying the centuries-long process that brought us into the modern era, Wyman looks at a particularly eventful period which began this “Great Divergence.” Europe at the turn of the 16th century featured the invention of the printing press, great sea voyages, the rise of modern finance, extreme taxation, among other revolutionary developments. Of these, Wyman argues, the printing press – which allowed for the creation of mass media – is the single most important of these developments. Indeed, Colombus' voyages were “a media event as much as they were a historical event. The two aren't really separable.” The period of 1490-1530 is especially notable for what Wyman describes as the “scaling effect.” While in the 21st century it seems almost obvious that a revolutionary invention would lead to rapid and massive scaling up. But at the turn of the 16th century, the rapidity of the scaling effect of everything from mass media to sea voyages “scaled in a way that would have been extremely foreign at this time.” The Verge also tells its story through individuals which Wyman links with a broader theme. Famous figures such as Christopher Colombus and Martin Luther feature, as do lesser-known individuals such as the banker Jakob Fugger and printer Aldus Manutius. Wyman delves into an extraordinarily important period of European history that shaped our globalized present from multiple angles and refreshing nuance.

From the Great Divergence to the nature of historical scholarship, our conversation with Professor Gagan Sood continues.

Today we discuss The End of History and the Great Divergence with Professor Gagan Sood of the London School of Economics.

In this episode of "Keen On", Andrew is joined by Patrick Wyman, the author of "The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World", to explore the four explosive decades between 1490 and 1530 and bring to life the dramatic and deeply human story of how the West was reborn. Patrick Wyman holds a PhD in history from the University of Southern California. He previously worked as a sports journalist, covering mixed martial arts and boxing from 2013 to 2018. His work has been featured in Deadspin, The Washington Post, Bleacher Report, and others. He is currently host of the podcast, Tides of History, and previously the host of Fall of Rome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the Dow continues to rise higher while the NASDAQ struggles to keep up, Scott Wapner and the Investment Committee debate if it’s time to start betting against big tech as one of our Committee Members has already done. Plus, we’re joined by JP Morgan’s Dubravko Lakos to discuss the powerful setup in the consumer trade as we head towards a global reopening. And the Investment Committee highlights some of their biggest moves to start the week.

Pakistan was colonized by the British alongside the rest of the South Asian subcontinent. But the basic nature of colonialism is often misunderstood, especially by the former colonizers -- the British were here to extract wealth, and the nature and magnitude of this extraction needs to be understood. What did "the Drain" mean for living standards in colonial South Asia? Did we get anything back for what the British extracted from it? What role did the Drain play in the industrialization of Britain and other British settler-colonies? Did colonial extraction get in the way of our “catching up” with the European countries as far as the Great Divergence is concerned?I'm joined by Dr. Utsa Patnaik, co-author of A Theory of Imperialism, to discuss these questions.Music by Zobu.

As the covid-19 pandemic continues, disparities in the prospects of economies, industries and businesses are increasing. Host Rachana Shanbhogue and Henry Curr, our economics editor, investigate how the pandemic will recast the global economic order. They talk to Gita Gopinath, chief economist at the IMF, to identify who risks being left behind. And as the pandemic upends labour markets, will governments resist change or embrace the new reality?Please subscribe to The Economist for full access to print, digital and audio editions:www.economist.com/podcastoffer See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

As the covid-19 pandemic continues, disparities in the prospects of economies, industries and businesses are increasing. Host Rachana Shanbhogue and Henry Curr, our economics editor, investigate how the pandemic will recast the global economic order. They talk to Gita Gopinath, chief economist at the IMF, to identify who risks being left behind. And as the pandemic upends labour markets, will governments resist change or embrace the new reality?Please subscribe to The Economist for full access to print, digital and audio editions:www.economist.com/podcastoffer See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

 China has defied recession in 2020, but where to now? Investment manager Roderick Snell anticipates big things ahead. 

  China has defied recession in 2020, but where to now? Investment manager Roderick Snell anticipates big things ahead.  

Why are some countries rich, while others are poor? How did we get from a world of "surprising resemblances" to one where Europe pulled ahead while other major regions seem to have gotten left behind? Previously we discussed the role of culture and institutions in these transitions. But some scholars look more closely to the category of capitalism as a specific way in which production and consumption is organized, and especially its drive for profit-maximization. What does capitalism have to do with industrialization and modern economic growth? Why did these happen in England and not elsewhere?I'm joined by Dr. Shami Ghosh, author of King's Sagas and Norwegian History: Problems and Perspectives, and Writing the Barbarian Past: Studies in Early Medieval Historical Narrative, to discuss these questions.Music by Zobu.

This week, Professor Stephen Broadberry shares insights from his extensive work in constructing national accounts over the very long run, to answer contemporary debates. When did the Great Divergence occur? Why does structural change matter and what did it imply for leading economies of the last century? Finally, we look at the implications of economic the frequency and magnitude of economic shrinking for developing countries.

Why are some countries rich, while other countries are poor? It wasn't always the way it is now. For centuries the Middle East was doing better than Europe economically (among other things), and South Asia and China were in their own ways even worth considering as centres of the world economy up to the 1700s. Around this time most regions of the world appear to have converged on similar levels of living standards by some measures, but that changed very quickly. Why did Europe pull ahead while the rest did not? Some explanations point to culture and religion. Others point to institutions (the laws, policies, and rules of the game in general) that Europe might have had and others did not. Are they related?I'm joined by Dr. Jared Rubin, author of Rulers, Religion and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not, to discuss these questions.Music by Zobu.

How do we tell when one period ends and another begins? What are the fundamental characteristics of the early modern period? My dear friend (and friend of the show!) Keith Pluymers, assistant professor of history at Illinois State University, returns to chat with me about periodization, the Great Divergence, and riots in the early modern period.Support us by supporting our sponsors!SimpliSafe - Head to simplisafe.com/tides to get FREE shipping and 60 day money back guarantee.

Chris and Neal wrap up the events of the last week involving the public markets, economic outlook, and Black Lives Matter. Chris exclaims that he's never seen a greater divergence between the facts on the ground and the expectations on the economy and public markets. With the markets have risen to an all-time high the retracement of the current market has put all others in the dust. While many areas have recovered there still remains pockets of investable value. Additionally, Neal Inquires about Black Lives Matter and we hear Chris imploring others to take action, to listen, and to be in tune with those that are thought leaders and important in our lives during these stressful times. Chris and Neal explore ways to communicate support with intent and various methods to provide assistance such as contributing to the Minneapolis protestor defense fund. Supporting protestors is a worthy cause! To donate: https://minnesotafreedomfund.org

In the second part of our series on economic growth and development, I provide a brief history of the world economy, beginning with the key features of premodern economies and the Malthusian trap. I then outline critical developments and points of debate in subsequent economic history, including the Great Divergence, the First and Second Industrial Revolutions, the Great Depression and era of central planning, the Bretton Woods era and the gold standard, and the modern period of neoliberalism and globalisation. Recommended pre-listening is Episode 103: Economic Growth and Development Part I. If you enjoyed the podcast please consider supporting the show by making a paypal donation or becoming a patreon supporter. https://www.patreon.com/jamesfodor https://www.paypal.me/ScienceofEverything  

Brenton Dickieson of A Pilgrim in Narnia comes Back By The Woodpile to talk about C.S. Lewis, his work The Great Divorce and how it factors to Christianity's challenges of today. 

Leandro Prados de la Escosura (Professor of Economic History, Carlos III University, Madrid) gives a lecture on ‘Did the Little Divergence within Europe and America contribute to the Great Divergence?' Part of panel 2: The Great Divergence: Timing and Causality 20 years later Chair: Sebastian Conrad (Free University, Berlin)

Bishnu Gupta (Professor of Economics, Warwick) gives a lecture on ‘Asia and the Great Divergence'. Part of Panel 2: The Great Divergence: Timing and Causality 20 years later Chair: Sebastian Conrad (Free University, Berlin)

Yaron Brook discusses Niall Ferguson's 6 killer apps of Western Civ. and suggests there is one operating system and 2 mega "apps" that shaped the West and explain the Great Divergence.Like what you hear?  Become a Patreon member, get exclusive content and support the creation of more podcasts like this! https://www.patreon.com/YaronBrookShow or support the show direct through PayPal: paypal.me/YaronBrookShow.Want more? Tune in to the Yaron Brook Show on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/user/ybrook). Want to learn more about Objectivism? Check out ARI at https://ari.aynrand.org.

Why didn't Rome rise again? Everywhere else in the world, the appearance of one great empire was marked by their recurrent resurgence, but in Europe it happened only once. Professor Walter Scheidel of Stanford University - the author of numerous outstanding books on Rome and beyond, most recently "The Great Leveler", on the history of economic inequality - argues that this lack of recurring empires is what laid the groundwork for the eventual rise of Europe, the Great Divergence, that underpins the modern world of today. Watch a preview of Genius, the new show on National Geographic about Albert Einstein, starring academy award winner Geoffrey Rush: NatGeoTV.com/Genius Take the survey at wondery.com/survey.

with Rob Nixon The world faces two great crises, according Prof. Rob Nixon: the post-war ‘Great Acceleration’ of unsustainable economic growth that has precipitated severe environmental degradation; and the ‘Great Divergence’ of accelerating inequality within societies across the globe. How mankind meets these challenges will profoundly affect the future of … more >>

Due to a series of unfortunate events, this episode is late in the making, but Simon and Max do their best to bring it back up to speed by talking about a new divergence in video games, and how that's bending traditional concepts of singleplayer and multiplayer games.

Lecture 7 (4/23): This lecture covers economic growth, including measurement of growth, and the calculation of growth rates. Also in the lecture, Professor Stevens discusses the production function in the economy, speed of convergence and the great divergance.

One of the standard assumptions of modern Western social science (history included) is that material conditions drive historical development. All of the “Great Transitions” in world history–the origins of agriculture, the birth of cities, the rise of high culture, the industrial revolution–can, so most Western social scientists claim, be associated with some condition that compelled otherwise conservative humans to act in new ways. This premise is of course most closely linked to Marx, but it is found throughout post-Marxist big picture scholarship (including my own humble contribution to that literature). Ricardo Duchesne argues in his new The Uniqueness of Western Civilization (Brill, 2011) that we have it all wrong. History, he claims, is driven by creative people and their ideas, not by the conditions they find themselves in. If you see a bit of Hegel and Nietzsche here, you are not wrong: Duchesne embraces them both (and throws in a considerable amount of Weber to boot). But he goes much further. He trys to demonstrate using the best literature available on a wide variety of topics that the Hegelian-Nietzschian view of historical development is correct. This is not a book of theory alone; it's an attempt to empirically demonstrate a theory. Even more radically, Duchesne uses the Hegelian-Nietzschian view to argue that since the invasion of the Indo-Europeans, a pastoral people who were imbued with unique aristocratic-warrior ethos, the West has been more creative than other world historical civilizations, and that this creativity explains in large measure the “Great Divergence” that we have seen in modern time. This is a challenging book, and one that requires study. It is not light reading. But anyone who is brave enough to try to understand what it says will be greatly rewarded. I know I was. PS: Brill, could you please put out an affordable paperback edition of this book, or perhaps release it in electronic version once it's been sold to all the libraries that will buy it?

One of the standard assumptions of modern Western social science (history included) is that material conditions drive historical development. All of the “Great Transitions” in world history–the origins of agriculture, the birth of cities, the rise of high culture, the industrial revolution–can, so most Western social scientists claim, be associated with some condition that compelled otherwise conservative humans to act in new ways. This premise is of course most closely linked to Marx, but it is found throughout post-Marxist big picture scholarship (including my own humble contribution to that literature). Ricardo Duchesne argues in his new The Uniqueness of Western Civilization (Brill, 2011) that we have it all wrong. History, he claims, is driven by creative people and their ideas, not by the conditions they find themselves in. If you see a bit of Hegel and Nietzsche here, you are not wrong: Duchesne embraces them both (and throws in a considerable amount of Weber to boot). But he goes much further. He trys to demonstrate using the best literature available on a wide variety of topics that the Hegelian-Nietzschian view of historical development is correct. This is not a book of theory alone; it’s an attempt to empirically demonstrate a theory. Even more radically, Duchesne uses the Hegelian-Nietzschian view to argue that since the invasion of the Indo-Europeans, a pastoral people who were imbued with unique aristocratic-warrior ethos, the West has been more creative than other world historical civilizations, and that this creativity explains in large measure the “Great Divergence” that we have seen in modern time. This is a challenging book, and one that requires study. It is not light reading. But anyone who is brave enough to try to understand what it says will be greatly rewarded. I know I was. PS: Brill, could you please put out an affordable paperback edition of this book, or perhaps release it in electronic version once it’s been sold to all the libraries that will buy it? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the standard assumptions of modern Western social science (history included) is that material conditions drive historical development. All of the “Great Transitions” in world history–the origins of agriculture, the birth of cities, the rise of high culture, the industrial revolution–can, so most Western social scientists claim, be associated with some condition that compelled otherwise conservative humans to act in new ways. This premise is of course most closely linked to Marx, but it is found throughout post-Marxist big picture scholarship (including my own humble contribution to that literature). Ricardo Duchesne argues in his new The Uniqueness of Western Civilization (Brill, 2011) that we have it all wrong. History, he claims, is driven by creative people and their ideas, not by the conditions they find themselves in. If you see a bit of Hegel and Nietzsche here, you are not wrong: Duchesne embraces them both (and throws in a considerable amount of Weber to boot). But he goes much further. He trys to demonstrate using the best literature available on a wide variety of topics that the Hegelian-Nietzschian view of historical development is correct. This is not a book of theory alone; it’s an attempt to empirically demonstrate a theory. Even more radically, Duchesne uses the Hegelian-Nietzschian view to argue that since the invasion of the Indo-Europeans, a pastoral people who were imbued with unique aristocratic-warrior ethos, the West has been more creative than other world historical civilizations, and that this creativity explains in large measure the “Great Divergence” that we have seen in modern time. This is a challenging book, and one that requires study. It is not light reading. But anyone who is brave enough to try to understand what it says will be greatly rewarded. I know I was. PS: Brill, could you please put out an affordable paperback edition of this book, or perhaps release it in electronic version once it’s been sold to all the libraries that will buy it? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the standard assumptions of modern Western social science (history included) is that material conditions drive historical development. All of the “Great Transitions” in world history–the origins of agriculture, the birth of cities, the rise of high culture, the industrial revolution–can, so most Western social scientists claim, be associated with some condition that compelled otherwise conservative humans to act in new ways. This premise is of course most closely linked to Marx, but it is found throughout post-Marxist big picture scholarship (including my own humble contribution to that literature). Ricardo Duchesne argues in his new The Uniqueness of Western Civilization (Brill, 2011) that we have it all wrong. History, he claims, is driven by creative people and their ideas, not by the conditions they find themselves in. If you see a bit of Hegel and Nietzsche here, you are not wrong: Duchesne embraces them both (and throws in a considerable amount of Weber to boot). But he goes much further. He trys to demonstrate using the best literature available on a wide variety of topics that the Hegelian-Nietzschian view of historical development is correct. This is not a book of theory alone; it’s an attempt to empirically demonstrate a theory. Even more radically, Duchesne uses the Hegelian-Nietzschian view to argue that since the invasion of the Indo-Europeans, a pastoral people who were imbued with unique aristocratic-warrior ethos, the West has been more creative than other world historical civilizations, and that this creativity explains in large measure the “Great Divergence” that we have seen in modern time. This is a challenging book, and one that requires study. It is not light reading. But anyone who is brave enough to try to understand what it says will be greatly rewarded. I know I was. PS: Brill, could you please put out an affordable paperback edition of this book, or perhaps release it in electronic version once it’s been sold to all the libraries that will buy it? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All poor, but no paupers: a Japanese perspective on the Great Divergence. Professor Osamu Saito. Ken Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence (2000), based mainly on Chinese evidence, argued that in the early modern period, the Asian standard of living was on a par with that of Europe and that market growth in East Asia was comparable to that in western Europe. The book has stimulated a major debate amongst economic historians and much progress has recently been made in cross-cultural comparisons of real wages. However, real differences between East and West cannot be properly understood unless household income, not just real wages, and income inequality, not just per-capita income, are compared; and due attention should be given, not only to product markets, but to factor markets as well. This lecture series examines these issues on the empirical basis of what Japan’s economic history can offer. The findings are not consistent with either Pomeranz’s account of East-West differences in living standards or with those presented in Bob Allen’s recent book.

All poor, but no paupers: a Japanese perspective on the Great Divergence Professor Osamu Saito Abstract Ken Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence (2000), based mainly on Chinese evidence, argued that in the early modern period, the Asian standard of living was on a par with that of Europe and that market growth in East Asia was comparable to that in western Europe. The book has stimulated a major debate amongst economic historians and much progress has recently been made in cross-cultural comparisons of real wages. However, real differences between East and West cannot be properly understood unless household income, not just real wages, and income inequality, not just per-capita income, are compared; and due attention should be given, not only to product markets, but to factor markets as well. This lecture series examines these issues on the empirical basis of what Japan’s economic history can offer. The findings are not consistent with either Pomeranz’s account of East-West differences in living standards or with those presented in Bob Allen’s recent book.

All poor, but no paupers: a Japanese perspective on the Great Divergence Professor Osamu Saito Ken Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence (2000), based mainly on Chinese evidence, argued that in the early modern period, the Asian standard of living was on a par with that of Europe and that market growth in East Asia was comparable to that in western Europe. The book has stimulated a major debate amongst economic historians and much progress has recently been made in cross-cultural comparisons of real wages. However, real differences between East and West cannot be properly understood unless household income, not just real wages, and income inequality, not just per-capita income, are compared; and due attention should be given, not only to product markets, but to factor markets as well. This lecture series examines these issues on the empirical basis of what Japan’s economic history can offer. The findings are not consistent with either Pomeranz’s account of East-West differences in living standards or with those presented in Bob Allen’s recent book.

All poor, but no paupers: a Japanese perspective on the Great Divergence Professor Osamu Saito Ken Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence (2000), based mainly on Chinese evidence, argued that in the early modern period, the Asian standard of living was on a par with that of Europe and that market growth in East Asia was comparable to that in western Europe. The book has stimulated a major debate amongst economic historians and much progress has recently been made in cross-cultural comparisons of real wages. However, real differences between East and West cannot be properly understood unless household income, not just real wages, and income inequality, not just per-capita income, are compared; and due attention should be given, not only to product markets, but to factor markets as well. This lecture series examines these issues on the empirical basis of what Japan’s economic history can offer. The findings are not consistent with either Pomeranz’s account of East-West differences in living standards or with those presented in Bob Allen’s recent book.

All poor, but no paupers: a Japanese perspective on the Great Divergence Professor Osamu Saito Ken Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence (2000), based mainly on Chinese evidence, argued that in the early modern period, the Asian standard of living was on a par with that of Europe and that market growth in East Asia was comparable to that in western Europe. The book has stimulated a major debate amongst economic historians and much progress has recently been made in cross-cultural comparisons of real wages. However, real differences between East and West cannot be properly understood unless household income, not just real wages, and income inequality, not just per-capita income, are compared; and due attention should be given, not only to product markets, but to factor markets as well. This lecture series examines these issues on the empirical basis of what Japan’s economic history can offer. The findings are not consistent with either Pomeranz’s account of East-West differences in living standards or with those presented in Bob Allen’s recent book.

Six hundred years ago China was the most powerful state on Earth and seemed destined to become the world’s first global power. But that did not happen. Scholars have been asking for more than a hundred years why this has happened. (January 26, 2008)