Institutions

Some interesting observations on social structure in China and Europe and Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize Lecture.

Introduction: Energy and Growth

So you know where this paper is going, here is the introduction as it currently stands:IntroductionIs energy an important driver of economic growth and development and if so what factors affect the strength of the relationship between energy and growth? Toman and Jemelkova (2003) argue that most of the literature on energy and economic development discusses how development affects energy use

Poverty and Progress: An Ecological Model of Economic Development

I remembered Mick Common mentioning this book and I saw that it was referred to by http://stochastictrend.blogspot.com/2009/08/allen-british-industrial-revolution-in.html">Robert Allen. I found that ANU's library had a copy but it was nowhere on the shelves and I put in a missing book search request. It couldn't be found. So I was surprised to get an e-mail while I was in Adelaide telling me to

Does the Natural Resource Curse not Apply in Democracies?

One of my colleagues, Sambit Bhattacharya, has an article out on natural resources and corruption. Their conclusion is:"Resource-rich countries are often cursed by corruption and governance problems. This column shows that the natural resource curse burdens non-democracies, but countries with better democratic institutions are not corrupted by such endowments. For governments accountable to their

Review of Prosperity without Growth

Here is a draft of my review to be published in Ecological Economics of Prosperity without Growth:Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite PlanetBy Tim Jackson, Earthscan, London, 2009.Reviewed by David I. SternUsually, I find myself disagreeing with advocates of zero economic growth (defined as non-increasing GDP). First, a large part of the world’s population remains poor by any

Collapse

I have been reading Collapse, Jared Diamond's account of the collapses of several past civilizations - Easter Island, the Maya, the Anasazi, and the Greenland Norse settlement prominent among them - and discussions of environmental stresses and sustainability issues in modern societies. Included is some original research of his with a coauthor on the factors affecting success or failure in the