1. Controlled Comparison and Polynesian Cultural Evolution
Patrick V. Kirch
2. Exploding Wests: Boom and Bust in Nineteenth-Century Settler Societies
3. Politics, Banking, and Economic Development: Evidence from New World Economies
4. Intra-Island and Inter-Island Comparisons
5. Shackled to the Past: The Causes and Consequences of Africa's Slave Trades
6. Colonial Land Tenure, Electoral Competition, and Public Goods in India
Abhijit Banerjee and Lakshmi Iyer
7. From Ancien Régime to Capitalism: The Spread of the French Revolution as a Natural Experiment
Daron Acemoglu, Davide Cantoni, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson
* Afterword: Using Comparative Methods in Studies of Human History
Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson
Monday, February 22, 2010
Jared Diamond ("Guns Germs and Steel") and James Robinson ("Reversal of Fortune" with Acemoglu and Johnson) have edited the book. The table of contents is impressive!:
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Built in a breakneck five years, Kangbashi is a state-of-the-art city full of architectural marvels and sculpture gardens. There's just one thing missing: people. The city, built by the government and funded with coal money, its chief industries energy and carmaking, has been mostly vacant for as long as it has been complete, except for the massive municipal headquarters. It's a grand canyon of empty monoliths. In a paradox only possible in today's economic system, Kangbashi manages to be both a boom town and a ghost town at the same time.
Kangbashi represents a particularly destructive economic force at work in China today: an obsession with GDP that ignores all other metrics of progress or human capital.
Officials (...) say the population reached 50,000 last year, which seems improbable given that pedestrians on the street were outnumbered by street sweepers.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
- Moon (2009)-a retro sci-fi movie. Kevin Spacey is the voice of the computer
- The invention of lying - At first glance, it is another feel-good movie from Hollywood. It is not. Thanks, Ricky Gervais.
- Flood with love for the kid. A one man remake of do Rambo First Blood (!?!?!?). The critics say it is great.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
If the thesis is correct, much of the recent history of China should be rewritten:
Deng Xiaoping and his supporters, contrary to popular legend, did not agree on a reform program at the Third Plenum of the Eighth Party Congress in 1978, which installed him in power. A Chinese reform official by the name of Bao Tong later admitted as much: “In fact, reform wasn’t discussed. Reform wasn’t listed on the agenda, nor was it mentioned in the work reports.” (...)This is the book.
Throughout the reform process, the Chinese Communist Party simply reacted to (and wisely did not oppose) bottom-up reform initiatives that emanated largely from the rural population. (...)
Private business originated in agriculture, spread to the cities, and then returned to the countryside as rural-based industry. Many large private manufacturing firms developed in predominantly agricultural provinces (Zhejiang, Shandong, Guangdong, Hunan, and Sichuan).