Acemoglu Vs. Robinson

Acemoglu and Robinson make great strides in the institutional argument from North and Thomas’ start in Rise of the Western World. Their case is quite compelling in addressing the question of why are some countries so rich and some so poor. It’s appealing mainly because it all boils down to incentives: if masses are incentivized, a country will grow, if the elites alone are incentivized/hold the power, a country will stagnate. This argument is almost impossible to refute because it’s built on the fact that people respond to incentives to make (primarily) their own lives better — an idea one would be hard pressed to find flaw with. The incentive to “survive better” is the most basic incentive upon which to build a theory.
Ignoring Acemoglu and Robinson’s dismissal of the geography argument (to be addressed in the Critical Response section), there are two pieces of the puzzle that must be connected. As Diamond asserts, we must look to geography for the deepest, most exogenous determinant of them all in order to begin explaining why some countries are so rich and others so poor. His theory of initial endowments compels us to believe that it is simply by the luck of the …show more content…
In Origins of Comparative Development, Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson, among other things, isolate the effect of extractive vs. inclusive institutions. It can be difficult to parse out the effects of institutions when they have taken so long to evolve over time (e.g. Europe, China, etc.), but when the exogenous force of colonialism invaded, the difference in institutional development and future economic growth was stark. It is obvious to see that Spain set up extractive institutions in their American colonies and that England set up settler colonies which were far more likely to develop inclusive institutions; but, Why Nations Fail, broadens the scope of their