Quotes from Daron AcemoÄŸlu

The solution to the economic and political failure of nations today is to transform their extractive institutions toward inclusive ones. The vicious circle means that this is not easy. But it is not impossible, and the iron law of oligarchy is not inevitable. Either some preexisting inclusive elements in institutions, or the presence of broad coalitions leading the fight against the existing regime, or just the contingent nature of history, can break vicious circles.

Five hundred years ago, Mexico, home to the Aztec state, was certainly richer than the polities to the north, and the United States did not pull ahead of Mexico until the nineteenth century. South and North Korea were economically, as well as socially and culturally, indistinguishable before the country was divided at the 38th parallel after the Second World War. Similarly, most of the huge economic differences we observe around us today emerged over the last two hundred years.

Las instituciones económicas inclusivas exigen no solamente mercados, sino mercados inclusivos que creen unas reglas de juego más equitativas y oportunidades económicas para la mayoría de la gente. El monopolio generalizado, respaldado por el poder político de la élite, contradice esta posibilidad.

Though the extractive institutions that the Mayas created produced sufficient wealth for the cities to flourish and the elite to become wealthy and generate great art and monumental buildings, the system was not stable. The extractive institutions upon which this narrow elite ruled created extensive inequality, and thus the potential for infighting between those who could benefit from the wealth extracted from the people. This conflict ultimately led to the undoing of the Maya civilization. W

Denominamos instituciones económicas extractivas a las que tienen propiedades opuestas a las instituciones inclusivas. Son extractivas porque tienen como objetivo extraer rentas y riqueza de un subconjunto de la sociedad para beneficiar a un subconjunto distinto.

As we will show, poor countries are poor because those who have power make choices that create poverty. They get it wrong not by mistake or ignorance but on purpose.

Our brief review of the history of the Americas begins to give a sense of the forces that shape political and economic institutions. Different patterns of institutions today are deeply rooted in the past because once society gets organized in a particular way, this tends to persist. We'll show that this fact comes from the way that political and economic institutions interact. This

There should be no presumption that any critical juncture will lead to a successful political revolution or to change for the better. History is full of examples of revolutions and radical movements replacing one tyranny with another, in a pattern that the German sociologist Robert Michels dubbed the iron law of oligarchy, a particularly pernicious form of the vicious circle.

Stalin himself said in 1937 that "only bureaucrats can think that planning work ends with the creation of the plan. The creation of the plan is just the beginning. The real direction of the plan develops only after the putting together of the plan.

For every elite benefiting from extraction there is a non-elite who would love to replace him.

The powerful and the rest of society will often disagree about which set of institutions should remain in place and which ones should be changed.

At the dawn of the nineteenth century, many parts of the world, especially in Africa, lacked a state that could provide even a minimal degree of law and order, which is a prerequisite for having a modern economy.

La lección más importante que se puede aprender es que las instituciones extractivas no pueden generar un cambio tecnológico sostenido por dos razones: la falta de incentivos económicos y la resistencia por parte de las élites.

model broke down

oportunidades que surgieron a partir del siglo XIX y qué países no lo iban a hacer. Las raíces de la desigualdad mundial que observamos hoy en día pueden encontrarse en esta divergencia. Salvo contadas excepciones, los países ricos actuales son aquellos que se embarcaron en el proceso de industrialización y cambio tecnológico que empezó en el siglo XIX, y los pobres, los que no lo hicieron. 11

We will refer to political institutions that are sufficiently centralized and pluralistic as inclusive political institutions. When either of these conditions fails, we will refer to the institutions as extractive political institutions. There

Countries differ in their economic success because of their different institutions, the rules influencing how the economy works, and the incentives that motivate people.

Creative destruction redistributes not simply income and wealth, but also political power

Unlike Iturbide, Santa Ana, and Díaz, however, none of these military men used force to get into power. Nor did they use force to avoid having to relinquish power. They abided by the Constitution.

La combinación de innovación tecnológica y organizativa proporciona el modelo para el progreso económico que transformó las economías mundiales que llegarían a ser ricas.

but it also meant that there were checks within Parliament against any single group becoming too powerful and abusing its power. It was the critical factor in the emergence of pluralistic political institutions.

The reason that the economic and political trajectory of the South never changed, even though slavery was abolished and black men were given the right to vote, was because blacks' political power and economic independence were tenuous. The southern planters lost the war, but would win the peace. They were still organized and they still owned the land.

teorías clásicas de la sociología política, la teoría de la modernización, formulada por Seymour Martin Lipset, que defiende que todas las sociedades, cuando crecen, se dirigen a una existencia más moderna, desarrollada y civilizada y, en particular, hacia la democracia.

Tradicionalmente, la economía ha ignorado la política, pero la comprensión de la política resulta esencial para explicar la desigualdad del mundo.