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Unintended Consequences: The Impact of Factor Endowments, Culture, and Politics on Long-Run Economic Performance
In this book, based on the 1995 Ohlin Lectures, Deepak Lal provides an accessible, interdisciplinary account of the role of culture in shaping economic performance. Topics addressed include a possible future clash of civilizations, the role of Asian values in the East Asian economic miracle, the cultural versus economic causes of social decay in the West, and whether modernization leads to Westernization. Lal makes an important distinction between material and cosmological beliefs, showing how both were initially shaped by factor endowments and how they have evolved in response to changing historical pressures in different civilizations. Lal's first major theme is the interaction of factor endowments, culture, and politics in explaining modern intensive growth in the West. The other major theme is the role of individualism--an inadvertent legacy of the medieval Catholic Church--in promoting this growth, and the strange metamorphoses this has caused in both the West's cosmological beliefs and the interaction between the West and the rest. Lal takes account of the relevant literature in history, anthropology, social psychology, evolutionary biology, neurology, and sociology, and the economic history of the regions and cultures that form Eurasia. An appendix shows how the stories Lal tells can be described by four formal economic models.
304 pages, Paperback
First published November 6, 1998
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August 21, 2017
The reading of this book was such an inspiring endeavor that I believe it's time to start my Goodreads reviewing career with sharing my thoughts about it.
Lal manages to go through a vast history of world economy and does it in a strict and conceivable manner, even when it comes to pretty vague metaphysic ideas and worldview frameworks.
Lal's primary idea is that the outstanding success of the West comes from its individualism which in its turn come from the specific policy of Medieval Christian Roman Church and more particularly thanks to the stance Saint Augustine advocates in his "City of God". Lal puts it this way - while the vast majority of the cultures that people managed to create or live up to are based on the morale of the feeling of shame, Augustine's version of Christianity is a morale based on the feeling of guilt, which is the consequence of the doctrine of the original sin. The actions that are provoked by those two moral systems are not the same.
The other consequence of described fabula is the creation of the nuclear family and after that the emergence of a notion of the romantic love.
Lal manages to go through a vast history of world economy and does it in a strict and conceivable manner, even when it comes to pretty vague metaphysic ideas and worldview frameworks.
Lal's primary idea is that the outstanding success of the West comes from its individualism which in its turn come from the specific policy of Medieval Christian Roman Church and more particularly thanks to the stance Saint Augustine advocates in his "City of God". Lal puts it this way - while the vast majority of the cultures that people managed to create or live up to are based on the morale of the feeling of shame, Augustine's version of Christianity is a morale based on the feeling of guilt, which is the consequence of the doctrine of the original sin. The actions that are provoked by those two moral systems are not the same.
The other consequence of described fabula is the creation of the nuclear family and after that the emergence of a notion of the romantic love.
Displaying 1 of 1 review