The Nobel for Econsplaining
The Nobel for Econsplaining was written by Brendan Greeley and published in the Financial Times in 2024.
Inappropriate to use variation in institutions as a causal variable because they coexist in a system. "But good and bad institutions have always been paired. It is not so easy to tease them apart into natural experiments, and just as useful to see how they’re connected."
Need more cross-disciplinary research along economics and history.
Reading Notes
I think the author read the first few chapters of Why Nations Fail, decided that the collective work of all three recipients of the recent Nobel can all be distilled into 'democratic institutions good', and wrote an aggressive article.
Many conflicted feelings:
- Fair point re: epistemology.
- Wouldn't care to read this author's take on economic literature again.
Strange to see Acemoglu being read in the context of economic literature at all. He's built a niche for himself at the intersection of growth macroeconomics and IR, but his work is studied in the latter academia far more often. Reading his work in the context of IR's tribalism might help to explain why the institutional arguments are simple (even naive).
- Love to see someone dunking on IR institutionalism, even from an angle like this.