Pretty good article, and while it raises some decent criticisms, a lot of it hinges around this part
>”Once again, “Europeans implementing good institutions” is just impossible to distinguish empirically from “Europeans moving in.””
While it’s impossible to distinguish, I’d argue it doesn’t matter. The Europeans brought education and technology and trade when the settled, and didn’t really do that when they extracted. The Europeans themselves were the institutions they were implementing. You can’t separate them, and that’s why AJR’s theories still hold, in my opinion.
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Pretty good article, and while it raises some decent criticisms, a lot of it hinges around this part
>”Once again, “Europeans implementing good institutions” is just impossible to distinguish empirically from “Europeans moving in.””
While it’s impossible to distinguish, I’d argue it doesn’t matter. The Europeans brought education and technology and trade when the settled, and didn’t really do that when they extracted. The Europeans themselves were the institutions they were implementing. You can’t separate them, and that’s why AJR’s theories still hold, in my opinion.