Economists agree about many things--contrary to popular opinion--but the majority agree about culture only in the sense that they no longer give it much thought."" So begins the first chapter of Cultures Merging, in which Eric Jones--one of the world's leading economic historians--takes an...

In this landmark work, a Nobel Prize-winning economist develops a new way of understanding the process by which economies change. Douglass North inspired a revolution in economic history a generation ago by demonstrating that economic performance is determined largely by the kind and quality of...