Deirdre McCloskey’s Bourgeois Dignity (2010) represents another breakthrough work in her career, and the second volume in a multi-volume work on the economic and intellectual history of western civilization. In a sense, the subtitle of the book explains well what this volume is all about--why...

This paper deals with institutional persistence in long-term economic development. We investigate the historical record of education in one of the fastest growing and most unequal societies in the twentieth century – the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Based on historical data from an...

This paper examines the trajectory of economic development in Botswana between the years 1820 and 1966, when it achieved independence. First, I review the historical trends in the country’s economic and social development indicators. I then proceed to analyze what factors have encouraged or...

The traditional relationship of patronage and clientship between the landlord- and the growing commercial class in Bida and other Nigerian Emirates - firmly established during the 19th century - left indelible marks which influence the pattern of social communication between these two classes...

The debate around the effects of globalization is both widening and deepening. While some nations, like India and China – countries that have consciously built a manufacturing sector for five decades – come across as winners, a large number of smaller Third World nations seem to lose out...

As a Norwegian sociologist pointed out recently at the Encontro Internacional de Vilamoura on Fishing, “the fisheries management is the management of people, not fish" This statement may surprise many specialists, but it puts once again a series of questions and problems in their true place:...

This article shows some important aspects of a worldwide, historical phenomenon: the globalization of commerce and art which started in the second half of the sixteenth century and had the American, Asian and European territories of the Hispanic Monarchy as main protagonist during the Early...

This set of three volumes argues that the mind – human consciousness – may be measured by considering mathematically the aggregate of that consciousness, i.e. social history. From this beginning theme of discussion three questions must arise. 1. How might this measurement be made? 2. Of what...

I argue that a form of consciousness may be found in American economic history, one which is both mathematically demonstrable and important. In this book I present a model of economic and political growth based upon systematic addition. We begin with a philosophic model of trade (pp. 34-46);...

The Great Famine of Ireland from 1845-51 ranks as one of the most lethal of all time, claiming approximately one eighth of the country’s population. Utilizing Famine Relief Commission reports to develop a micro-level dataset of blight severity, I find that in the short run, districts more...