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How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations
How 1,000 years of global history show why technological and economic progress is often followed by stagnation and even collapse
In How Progress Ends, Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation was the norm, and even today progress and prosperity in the world’s largest, most advanced economies—the United States and China—have fallen short of expectations. To appreciate why we cannot depend on any AI-fueled great leap forward, Frey offers a remarkable and fascinating journey across the globe, spanning the past 1,000 years, to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change.
By examining key historical moments—from the rise of the steam engine to the dawn of AI—Frey shows why technological shifts have shaped, and sometimes destabilized, entire civilizations. He explores why some leading technological powers of the past—such as Song China, the Dutch Republic, and Victorian Britain—ultimately lost their innovative edge, why some modern nations such as Japan had periods of rapid growth followed by stagnation, and why planned economies like the Soviet Union collapsed after brief surges of progress. Frey uncovers a recurring tension in while decentralization fosters the exploration of new technologies, bureaucracy is crucial for scaling them. When institutions fail to adapt to technological change, stagnation inevitably follows. Only by carefully balancing decentralization and bureaucracy can nations innovate and grow over the long term—findings that have worrying implications for the United States, Europe, China, and other economies today.
Through a rich narrative that weaves together history, economics, and technology, How Progress Ends reveals that managing the future requires us to draw the right lessons from the past.
In How Progress Ends, Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation was the norm, and even today progress and prosperity in the world’s largest, most advanced economies—the United States and China—have fallen short of expectations. To appreciate why we cannot depend on any AI-fueled great leap forward, Frey offers a remarkable and fascinating journey across the globe, spanning the past 1,000 years, to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change.
By examining key historical moments—from the rise of the steam engine to the dawn of AI—Frey shows why technological shifts have shaped, and sometimes destabilized, entire civilizations. He explores why some leading technological powers of the past—such as Song China, the Dutch Republic, and Victorian Britain—ultimately lost their innovative edge, why some modern nations such as Japan had periods of rapid growth followed by stagnation, and why planned economies like the Soviet Union collapsed after brief surges of progress. Frey uncovers a recurring tension in while decentralization fosters the exploration of new technologies, bureaucracy is crucial for scaling them. When institutions fail to adapt to technological change, stagnation inevitably follows. Only by carefully balancing decentralization and bureaucracy can nations innovate and grow over the long term—findings that have worrying implications for the United States, Europe, China, and other economies today.
Through a rich narrative that weaves together history, economics, and technology, How Progress Ends reveals that managing the future requires us to draw the right lessons from the past.
552 pages, Hardcover
Published September 16, 2025
101 people are currently reading
3025 people want to read
About the author
Carl Benedikt Frey
5 books45 followersCarl Benedikt Frey is the Oxford Martin Citi Fellow and codirector of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford. He is also a senior fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at Oxford and in the Department of Economic History at Lund University.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 23, 2025
A single mind may imagine the steam engine or the transistor, but without institutions, capital, and a community of exchange, the idea withers.
I liked the idea of this book more than the execution. The author draws an insightful conclusion from trying to understand how centralisation and decentralisation affect innovation, catching up with innovation, and a country's economy. Yet the book's content fails to build a strong, insightful story around this conclusion. I still liked it overall, but found it a bit disappointing after being overly excited after the first few chapters.
This was the 5th out of six books from the Financial Times book of the year shortlist, and 8th out of the sixteen in the longlist: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/2.... I might read one or two more from the list. Chokepoints is so far my favourite.
I liked the idea of this book more than the execution. The author draws an insightful conclusion from trying to understand how centralisation and decentralisation affect innovation, catching up with innovation, and a country's economy. Yet the book's content fails to build a strong, insightful story around this conclusion. I still liked it overall, but found it a bit disappointing after being overly excited after the first few chapters.
This was the 5th out of six books from the Financial Times book of the year shortlist, and 8th out of the sixteen in the longlist: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/2.... I might read one or two more from the list. Chokepoints is so far my favourite.
November 9, 2025
How Progress Ends sets out to ask one of the grand questions of our time about how a society gets on the path of progress, and more importantly, what may cause derailment for those on it. The author covers a swathe of economic history with range and confidence, moving through centuries of invention, decline, and recovery.
Yet the more one reads, the clearer it becomes that the book’s conclusions, scant as they are and rarely on the big topic, were decided before the evidence was gathered. The result is not a study or a schema of factors that cause progress to end, but a demonstration of how history could be bent to support whatever wishes or conclusions one may have already formed about the current affairs and likely path ahead for various economies for the next few years. In the process, the book not only trivializes the utility of studying history but also distorts the lessons that could have been drawn from some excellent sections on non-US, non-UK episodes that most readers would be less familiar with.
The past is pressed into service of the present; centuries of complex evolution are marshalled to justify passing political preferences. What could have been a meditation on the anatomy of stagnation becomes instead a selective commentary on small asides on topics as specific as artificial intelligence or fiscal policy, which seem oddly trivial after such a sweeping historical journey.
There are, to be fair, moments of erudition and many engaging historical vignettes. The episodes are often well chosen and narrated with skill. But with the lessons drawn being surprisingly narrow and most reserved for the concluding sections, the connective tissue between them is thin. The frustration lies not in the author’s politics but in the loss of intellectual openness. One finishes the book with the sense that history has been quarried rather than explored. There is little attempt to let the evidence unsettle the hypothesis. The bait-and-switch invalidates the serious work that precedes it.
Reading it nevertheless provokes reflection, though perhaps not in the direction intended. If the book itself fails to explain how progress ends, its material suggests several truths about how it begins. The rest of the review is this reviewer’s attempts at some lessons that could have been drawn:
The first is that progress requires intent. The primacy of intent is the most important necessary condition. No amount of talent or circumstance can substitute for a genuine will to advance. And, it is the will of those wielding the power that matters. When those who hold power—whether monarchs, parties, or corporations—cease to desire improvement, decay follows. Intent can arise from rivalry, from pride, from ideology, even from fear, but without it, invention drifts. And if the will is there, many problems around bureaucracy discussed within the book, could be overcome, even if the solutions adopted by one type of economic or political system could differ from those of some other.
The second lesson is that ideas, however luminous, are fragile without the structures that carry them. A single mind may imagine the steam engine or the transistor, but without institutions, capital, and a community of exchange, the idea withers. The story of progress is not only the story of creators but also of connectors, the merchants, teachers, bureaucrats, and engineers who turn sparks into systems. History shows that progress rarely belongs to the pure visionary; it belongs to those who build the scaffolding around vision. The nourishing ecosystem could include institutional structures, communication networks, and hierarchical platforms for groups to come together and build within the straitjacket of permissible norms and rules.
Scale matters too. Small or closed societies can generate brilliance but struggle to sustain it. Innovation now is less an act of solitude than of orchestration: large groups aligning knowledge, capital, and infrastructure. The modern world rewards those who can mobilise collective intelligence. Where that coordination falters, not just through mistrust, dogma, or poor design, but even where there are insufficient resources or scale, progress stalls, no matter how enlightened the leadership’s intent. The scale constraints are more important now than before. Progress in an increasing number of critical fields today demands an immense, pre-existing foundation of knowledge and resources, apart from vast capital. For instance, the nations that never participated in drug discovery have little chance of one of its groups or corporates coming up with an Ozempic-level idea out of nowhere anytime in the next decade.
It also follows that progress depends less on moral virtue than on structural capability. One may prefer certain political systems or find others repugnant, but history is clear that the drive to innovate can coexist with a wide range of regimes. The essential question is not moral approval but whether those in power are willing to permit the circulation of ideas and the reallocation of resources that progress demands. To suggest, as the author does, that some societies are destined to fail because of their present political complexion is to confuse personal distaste with historical law.
Many of these would have been more evident if the author had focused on the 90% of the world that failed to progress over the last hundred years, rather than steering the discussion towards who may win the current race at the top. Colonial masters did not have the intent, for instance. For a host of political systems currently focused on progress, there is not enough of a base to work on. They cannot keep importing the basic high-tech infrastructure and build enough on top to pay for them and advance steadily. Many nations today struggle not from apathy but from the starting point so far back. Their leaders may desire advancement, may read, plan, and exhort, but they lack the lattice of education, capital, and trust to catch up with the progress of leaders racing ahead. The world's most advanced are better supplied and better connected, are accelerating by compounding advantage. To treat this divergence as proof of moral superiority is to misunderstand the mechanics of innovation itself.
One can list a host of other things: from the impact of singular individuals or natural events to the will of society on account of prevalent sociological factors. The author could have remarked on the role played by colonizing leaders, who have perhaps affected far more progress stories than bureaucrats. The role played by geopolitical rivalries is the one that should have elicited far more discussions, given the examples chosen in the book, but the desire to conclude towards a pre-decided set likely did not allow the author to attempt to explain why factors that hampered the USSR, for instance, may not matter to China.
Once again, the book has good raw material. Unfortunately, the grandeur of the subject and potential of useful discussions dissolve into the narrowness of opinion.
Yet the more one reads, the clearer it becomes that the book’s conclusions, scant as they are and rarely on the big topic, were decided before the evidence was gathered. The result is not a study or a schema of factors that cause progress to end, but a demonstration of how history could be bent to support whatever wishes or conclusions one may have already formed about the current affairs and likely path ahead for various economies for the next few years. In the process, the book not only trivializes the utility of studying history but also distorts the lessons that could have been drawn from some excellent sections on non-US, non-UK episodes that most readers would be less familiar with.
The past is pressed into service of the present; centuries of complex evolution are marshalled to justify passing political preferences. What could have been a meditation on the anatomy of stagnation becomes instead a selective commentary on small asides on topics as specific as artificial intelligence or fiscal policy, which seem oddly trivial after such a sweeping historical journey.
There are, to be fair, moments of erudition and many engaging historical vignettes. The episodes are often well chosen and narrated with skill. But with the lessons drawn being surprisingly narrow and most reserved for the concluding sections, the connective tissue between them is thin. The frustration lies not in the author’s politics but in the loss of intellectual openness. One finishes the book with the sense that history has been quarried rather than explored. There is little attempt to let the evidence unsettle the hypothesis. The bait-and-switch invalidates the serious work that precedes it.
Reading it nevertheless provokes reflection, though perhaps not in the direction intended. If the book itself fails to explain how progress ends, its material suggests several truths about how it begins. The rest of the review is this reviewer’s attempts at some lessons that could have been drawn:
The first is that progress requires intent. The primacy of intent is the most important necessary condition. No amount of talent or circumstance can substitute for a genuine will to advance. And, it is the will of those wielding the power that matters. When those who hold power—whether monarchs, parties, or corporations—cease to desire improvement, decay follows. Intent can arise from rivalry, from pride, from ideology, even from fear, but without it, invention drifts. And if the will is there, many problems around bureaucracy discussed within the book, could be overcome, even if the solutions adopted by one type of economic or political system could differ from those of some other.
The second lesson is that ideas, however luminous, are fragile without the structures that carry them. A single mind may imagine the steam engine or the transistor, but without institutions, capital, and a community of exchange, the idea withers. The story of progress is not only the story of creators but also of connectors, the merchants, teachers, bureaucrats, and engineers who turn sparks into systems. History shows that progress rarely belongs to the pure visionary; it belongs to those who build the scaffolding around vision. The nourishing ecosystem could include institutional structures, communication networks, and hierarchical platforms for groups to come together and build within the straitjacket of permissible norms and rules.
Scale matters too. Small or closed societies can generate brilliance but struggle to sustain it. Innovation now is less an act of solitude than of orchestration: large groups aligning knowledge, capital, and infrastructure. The modern world rewards those who can mobilise collective intelligence. Where that coordination falters, not just through mistrust, dogma, or poor design, but even where there are insufficient resources or scale, progress stalls, no matter how enlightened the leadership’s intent. The scale constraints are more important now than before. Progress in an increasing number of critical fields today demands an immense, pre-existing foundation of knowledge and resources, apart from vast capital. For instance, the nations that never participated in drug discovery have little chance of one of its groups or corporates coming up with an Ozempic-level idea out of nowhere anytime in the next decade.
It also follows that progress depends less on moral virtue than on structural capability. One may prefer certain political systems or find others repugnant, but history is clear that the drive to innovate can coexist with a wide range of regimes. The essential question is not moral approval but whether those in power are willing to permit the circulation of ideas and the reallocation of resources that progress demands. To suggest, as the author does, that some societies are destined to fail because of their present political complexion is to confuse personal distaste with historical law.
Many of these would have been more evident if the author had focused on the 90% of the world that failed to progress over the last hundred years, rather than steering the discussion towards who may win the current race at the top. Colonial masters did not have the intent, for instance. For a host of political systems currently focused on progress, there is not enough of a base to work on. They cannot keep importing the basic high-tech infrastructure and build enough on top to pay for them and advance steadily. Many nations today struggle not from apathy but from the starting point so far back. Their leaders may desire advancement, may read, plan, and exhort, but they lack the lattice of education, capital, and trust to catch up with the progress of leaders racing ahead. The world's most advanced are better supplied and better connected, are accelerating by compounding advantage. To treat this divergence as proof of moral superiority is to misunderstand the mechanics of innovation itself.
One can list a host of other things: from the impact of singular individuals or natural events to the will of society on account of prevalent sociological factors. The author could have remarked on the role played by colonizing leaders, who have perhaps affected far more progress stories than bureaucrats. The role played by geopolitical rivalries is the one that should have elicited far more discussions, given the examples chosen in the book, but the desire to conclude towards a pre-decided set likely did not allow the author to attempt to explain why factors that hampered the USSR, for instance, may not matter to China.
Once again, the book has good raw material. Unfortunately, the grandeur of the subject and potential of useful discussions dissolve into the narrowness of opinion.
November 6, 2025
How Progress Ends starts out with a counter-intuitive and provocative hypothesis: Technological progress is not inevitable.
Actually, Carl Benedikt Frey argues, stagnation was the norm for most of human history. To appreciate why we cannot automatically assume any AI-fueled great leap forward, Frey offers a remarkable and fascinating journey across the globe, spanning the past 1,000 years, to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change. From the rise of the steam engine to the recent AI-boom, the book illustrates why technological shifts have shaped entire civilizations. Frey also makes the point that leading technological powers, no matter how dominant they might seem, can quickly lose their position. Song China, the Dutch Republic, Victorian Britain, the Soviet Union, as well as modern Japan - the list of examples is long. And they are all from different epochs and backgrounds. They reange from monarchies and planned economies, to free capitalistic states. Amercia has so far been an enduring outlier, but will it stay on top after the AI race?
So why does progress end? Frey argues that while exploration needs freedom, scaling needs structure. “Innovation demands breaking rules, but efficient execution relies on following them,” Frey writes. Balance is essential for long-term progress, meaning that economies and civilizations efficiently switch from decentralization to centralization. This is a core tension throughout history, from Song China to 21st century America. The fundamental barrier is always institutional inertia: When institutions fail to adapt to technological change, stagnation (or even collapse) inevitably follows. Only by carefully balancing decentralization and bureaucracy can nations innovate and grow over the long term. One powerful example that Frey describes is the internet. The Cambrian explosion of innovation would have been unthinkable if the AT&T monopoly hadn’t been shattered and replaced by an open and highly competitive market a couple of years earlier.
Readers interested in the consequences of resisting technological change should definitively also have a look at Frey’s previous book The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation, in which he makes the argument that it is incumbent that citiziens of democracies believe in their benefit through technological progress. Otherwise, politicians will exploit that skepticism to push through protectionist measures, build national champions, and forcefully keep jobs at home that are more efficiently done somewhere else. The tech edge is endangered.
How Progress Ends was shortlisted for the Financial Times Best Book of the Year Award 2025, always a prime source for great business books. That nomination is well deserved, as the book is written with the clarity and rigor we have come to expect from the economic historian Frey. He is a professor at the University of Oxford and a luminary when it comes to technological revolutions. In How Progress Ends Frey’s central thesis is explored with refreshing intellectual honesty. The book excels in dissecting the institutional and political failures that have brought progress to a halt. This is where the book shines brightest: It is not just a history lesson, but a sharp-eyed, contemporary analysis of why we struggle to build and scale the future we imagine.
This review is originally published within the Money Book Cirlcle in my newsletter. Sign up here for regular reviews of the hottest books on money and technology: https://igorpejic.substack.com/
Actually, Carl Benedikt Frey argues, stagnation was the norm for most of human history. To appreciate why we cannot automatically assume any AI-fueled great leap forward, Frey offers a remarkable and fascinating journey across the globe, spanning the past 1,000 years, to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change. From the rise of the steam engine to the recent AI-boom, the book illustrates why technological shifts have shaped entire civilizations. Frey also makes the point that leading technological powers, no matter how dominant they might seem, can quickly lose their position. Song China, the Dutch Republic, Victorian Britain, the Soviet Union, as well as modern Japan - the list of examples is long. And they are all from different epochs and backgrounds. They reange from monarchies and planned economies, to free capitalistic states. Amercia has so far been an enduring outlier, but will it stay on top after the AI race?
So why does progress end? Frey argues that while exploration needs freedom, scaling needs structure. “Innovation demands breaking rules, but efficient execution relies on following them,” Frey writes. Balance is essential for long-term progress, meaning that economies and civilizations efficiently switch from decentralization to centralization. This is a core tension throughout history, from Song China to 21st century America. The fundamental barrier is always institutional inertia: When institutions fail to adapt to technological change, stagnation (or even collapse) inevitably follows. Only by carefully balancing decentralization and bureaucracy can nations innovate and grow over the long term. One powerful example that Frey describes is the internet. The Cambrian explosion of innovation would have been unthinkable if the AT&T monopoly hadn’t been shattered and replaced by an open and highly competitive market a couple of years earlier.
Readers interested in the consequences of resisting technological change should definitively also have a look at Frey’s previous book The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation, in which he makes the argument that it is incumbent that citiziens of democracies believe in their benefit through technological progress. Otherwise, politicians will exploit that skepticism to push through protectionist measures, build national champions, and forcefully keep jobs at home that are more efficiently done somewhere else. The tech edge is endangered.
How Progress Ends was shortlisted for the Financial Times Best Book of the Year Award 2025, always a prime source for great business books. That nomination is well deserved, as the book is written with the clarity and rigor we have come to expect from the economic historian Frey. He is a professor at the University of Oxford and a luminary when it comes to technological revolutions. In How Progress Ends Frey’s central thesis is explored with refreshing intellectual honesty. The book excels in dissecting the institutional and political failures that have brought progress to a halt. This is where the book shines brightest: It is not just a history lesson, but a sharp-eyed, contemporary analysis of why we struggle to build and scale the future we imagine.
This review is originally published within the Money Book Cirlcle in my newsletter. Sign up here for regular reviews of the hottest books on money and technology: https://igorpejic.substack.com/
December 2, 2025
This is truly a very good book, and it is a surprise to me. I was skeptical because I'm very tired of this kind of 'popular science economics and institutions trip through centuries showing what's good and bad for wealth and why truth lies in the middle' books. (And somehow I still reach for them - why? - it's a different story). I have a sentiment for 2012 'Why Nations Fail' by Acemoglu and Robinson (check my paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...), or a more classic study by David Landes ('The Wealth and Poverty of Nations'), but it seems like many have tried to repeat their success and have written way too many books like that since then. Ok, they might add some new insight or enrich the list of examples, but the value added by reading each subsequent book of this kind decreases exponentially. They seem to target only first-time economic & institutional history readers.
'How Progress Ends' is different. Frey has an idea and is not afraid to write a book on a scale that enables him to develop it ambitiously. The text is tense and informative, full of references to acclaimed literature and well-placed quotes. While reading this work, you feel the long-term effort behind it. This is not only a book for aspiring readers but also a source of inspiration for scholars. I learned about it myself. As a researcher in competition law, I was pleased to discover that Frey uses the word 'antitrust' 145 times in this single work.
It might be slightly below my default 5-star benchmark, but given the above, I'm eager to rate it that highly.
'How Progress Ends' is different. Frey has an idea and is not afraid to write a book on a scale that enables him to develop it ambitiously. The text is tense and informative, full of references to acclaimed literature and well-placed quotes. While reading this work, you feel the long-term effort behind it. This is not only a book for aspiring readers but also a source of inspiration for scholars. I learned about it myself. As a researcher in competition law, I was pleased to discover that Frey uses the word 'antitrust' 145 times in this single work.
It might be slightly below my default 5-star benchmark, but given the above, I'm eager to rate it that highly.
October 1, 2025
I enjoyed the author's previous book about technology The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation. That was about the consequences of resisting technology changes. This book takes a broader look at the part governments play in nurturing or holding back on progress in technology. The author's central point is that the same dilemmas have been posed for centuries, and more open governments are better for innovation, while central governments are better for "catching up" and then reaping the technology produced by others. He looks back to different eras where China, the UK and the Soviet Union were on the cutting edge, only to be overtaken. He then turns to recent decades and looks at Japan, China and the USA. China has avoided the mistakes made in the Soviet Union, and has allowed some innovation, but most of the world (including Europe and China) has benefited from "catching up" on American technology for the last 100 years. Which of the two systems (assuming USA v China) is likely to win the race to be the next superpower? There's no clear answer.
November 28, 2025
Great overview of a few thousands of years of history of progress; why specific locations in the world were technologically and economically dominant at various times, and what that means for our current-day existence. It is one of these great history books that imparts so many facts upon you per page about what happened in history that you feel embedded into the concept space of the subject. Additionally, it has good points that you wouldn't expect to be true, such as war not being an instigator of progress. I also enjoyed his holistic take on bureaucracy vs. decentralization, not taking one or the other position.
December 11, 2025
I am a sucker for these kinds of big-idea books. Frey’s big idea is that distribution of power results in more innovation, while centralized power is better in harnessing the results of that innovation. The book is mostly a collection of historical anecdotes supporting that thesis, and whike it felt like fewer would have been enough, the stories were sufficiently interesting in their own right. What struck me most was the book’s analysis of AI and its limits, and especially the point that even in the age of AI you still need a distributed network of research and business to have real progress. That is something to really think about.
December 13, 2025
Very interesting book showing the relationship between innovation, technology and state institutions throughout history.The book is broad in his scope discussing these topics contrasting the United States, European nations, Russia, China, etc… An interesting takeaway of the book is that decentralised institutions (e.g US, Europe) help innovation but centralised institutions in autocracies such as Russia and China are helpful in exploiting new technologies and scaling them up.
December 15, 2025
It is a good compilation of facts, but (1) arguably there is a simpler way to convey the message (at least last chapter provides some type of a summary), (2) it looks a bit simplistic as the author defines 2-3 metrics and justify everything that happens in the country based on that, which might be true, but likely loses important nuances, (3) does not address the question that is raised in the name of the book
December 13, 2025
Excellent parallels drawn across different times, regions and forms of government, which then exposes principles that lead to success economically/technologically.
Excellent new framing that based on the place in the technological cycle, different forms of governance (or management, or working style) are needed.
Excellent new framing that based on the place in the technological cycle, different forms of governance (or management, or working style) are needed.
October 21, 2025
Frey frames technological development as a tension between decentralized experimentation (good for exploring new technological paths) and centralized scaling / bureaucracy (good for exploiting existing technologies).
Would have been improved by focusing a bit more on ecological factors and resource constraints-
The book basically only mentions in passing nature, ecological disruptions, and natural capital i.e
• Ecological constraints: How depletion, ecosystem fragility, or climate change might limit technological or institutional trajectories.
• Natural capital as a foundational factor: soil fertility, biodiversity, water, mineral stocks, ecosystem services, etc., as core inputs or constraints on economic/technological dynamics.
• Environmental feedbacks: For example, how pollution, resource depletion, or climate disruptions feed back into institutional and technological systems.
• Uneven geographic endowments of natural resources and how they might shape comparative advantage in different eras (beyond purely institutional stories).
Analysis of modern China seems also weak for lack of discussion of energy, climate or health.
Would have been improved by focusing a bit more on ecological factors and resource constraints-
The book basically only mentions in passing nature, ecological disruptions, and natural capital i.e
• Ecological constraints: How depletion, ecosystem fragility, or climate change might limit technological or institutional trajectories.
• Natural capital as a foundational factor: soil fertility, biodiversity, water, mineral stocks, ecosystem services, etc., as core inputs or constraints on economic/technological dynamics.
• Environmental feedbacks: For example, how pollution, resource depletion, or climate disruptions feed back into institutional and technological systems.
• Uneven geographic endowments of natural resources and how they might shape comparative advantage in different eras (beyond purely institutional stories).
Analysis of modern China seems also weak for lack of discussion of energy, climate or health.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews