This is a fascinating article. It makes a number of points that are quite applicable to today’s international and cultural crises.
I am particularly intrigued by your suggestion that cultural distinctions can be interpreted according to what economists call “comparative advantage.” That economic concept leads to a number of seemingly dive…
This is a fascinating article. It makes a number of points that are quite applicable to today’s international and cultural crises.
I am particularly intrigued by your suggestion that cultural distinctions can be interpreted according to what economists call “comparative advantage.” That economic concept leads to a number of seemingly diverse propositions: from why tariffs are inefficient to why different currencies exist (and why removing them can lead to problems).
I am dubious when economic concepts that apply to the individual are aggregated over a population. You just don’t know if you confounded your analysis with interactive effects. (For example, why do unions exist and persist and why do queues form in free markets?)
My view is that people are, in fact, very much the same (Russians, Hamas, Israelis, British, etc.). Differences arise because their rational choices are filtered through the institutions (or absence of institutions) of their society. These ideas are somewhat similar to Richard Piper’s conclusions you describe, though I have yet to read him myself.
Its would be interesting to study why Russia never developed the institutional structure that started in Europe in the Spanish Low Countries (Belgium etc.) and spread to England (we would call it the early Industrial Revolution). It would be additionally interesting to compare Russia to economic industrial development “also-rans” like Spain and France.
I’ll end this comment with a seemingly irrelevant addendum: I have enormous respect for Russian mathematics, and to a slightly lesser extent, Russian physics.
This is a fascinating article. It makes a number of points that are quite applicable to today’s international and cultural crises.
I am particularly intrigued by your suggestion that cultural distinctions can be interpreted according to what economists call “comparative advantage.” That economic concept leads to a number of seemingly diverse propositions: from why tariffs are inefficient to why different currencies exist (and why removing them can lead to problems).
I am dubious when economic concepts that apply to the individual are aggregated over a population. You just don’t know if you confounded your analysis with interactive effects. (For example, why do unions exist and persist and why do queues form in free markets?)
My view is that people are, in fact, very much the same (Russians, Hamas, Israelis, British, etc.). Differences arise because their rational choices are filtered through the institutions (or absence of institutions) of their society. These ideas are somewhat similar to Richard Piper’s conclusions you describe, though I have yet to read him myself.
Its would be interesting to study why Russia never developed the institutional structure that started in Europe in the Spanish Low Countries (Belgium etc.) and spread to England (we would call it the early Industrial Revolution). It would be additionally interesting to compare Russia to economic industrial development “also-rans” like Spain and France.
I’ll end this comment with a seemingly irrelevant addendum: I have enormous respect for Russian mathematics, and to a slightly lesser extent, Russian physics.