Ten of these questions will be on the final exam and you will be required to answer in a short legibly-writtenanswer (essay-type) each.
1."To understand why nations are rich and poor we need to go beyond economics and policy advice and instead study politics and political processes - how decisions get made and who gets to make them, and why they decide to do what they do." Discuss.
2. Compare and contrast the explanations of Allen with those of Acemoglu and Robinson as to why the Industrial Revolution first happened in Western Europe, specifically Great Britain, relative to anywhere else in the world. Which approach, if any, do you find more convincing? Explain.
3. "Societies that have enjoyed the greatest prosperity have also engaged in the highest levels of equality of economic and political opportunity and income redistribution, and economic growth has proceeded more favourably in societies with relatively equal distributions of incomes and resources than in those where wealth is concentrated in a few hands." Discuss.
4. "Africa was the part of the world with the institutions least able to take advantage of the Industrial Revolution around 1800, and since then (and before then) has experienced a long vicious circle of persistence and re-creation of extractive political and economic institutions." Discuss.
5. "Extractive institutions tend to lead to even more extractive institutions. Power leads to wealth, and wealth buys more power. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The result is a vicious circle or iron law of oligarchy, often sowing the seed of civil wars, economic ruin, political chaos, human suffering, descent into lawlessness, and state failure." Discuss, giving some examples.
6. 'World inequality today exists because during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, some nations were able to take advantage of the Industrial Revolution and the technologies and methods of organization that it brought, while others were either unable or unwilling to do so." Why was this? Discuss, giving some examples.
7. "Inclusive political institutions tend to support inclusive economic institutions, and vice versa. Once in place, inclusive economic and political institutions tend to create a virtuous circle; a process of positive feedback, making it more and more likely these institutions will persist and expand." Discuss, giving some examples.
8. "Countries become failed states not because of their geography, culture or ignorance, but because of their legacy of extractive institutions, which concentrate power and wealth in the hands of those controlling the state, opening the way for unrest, strife and civil war." Discuss.
9. "It is impossible to understand many of the poorer regions of the world today without understanding the new absolutism of the twentieth century: Communism. In almost all cases, communism brought vicious dictatorships, widespread human rights abuses, and poverty rather than prosperity." Do you agree or disagree? Critically discuss, giving some examples.
10. "Why does Ferguson not view the imperialism and colonial empires of the Western economic powers, such as the European nations and the United States, over the last 200 or so years, as one of the West's "killer apps" that made it rich? Explain what he sees as the 6 killer apps instead, and critically discuss if you agree or disagree with him.
11. "Civilizations are complex systems that can succumb to sudden and catastrophic malfunctions, moving quite suddenly from stability to instability and swift collapse. Think: the French Revolution, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, the British Empire, the Roman Empire, the Soviet Union, the Incas, Aztecs and Mayas, the Ming Dynasty, etc. Since we are now living through the end of 500 years of Western predominance, is Western civilization on the edge of this collapse, with sudden decline and fall as its looming fate?" Critically discuss.
12. "The rich economies of the world today are often referred to as the economies that have most allowed, and continue to allow, what famous economist Joseph Schumpeter called the "forces of creative destruction" to operate relatively unimpeded." Discuss.
13. "Breaking the iron law of oligarchy is difficult, but not impossible. History is not destiny." Critically discuss, giving some examples.
14. "The accelerating growth of scientific, medical and technological knowledge since 1800 or so has affected the world more than all other social and political changes taken together. In terms of its direct impact on human physical wellbeing and standard of living, it has led to a revolution in the human condition that has swept the world, to the most significant scientific, medical and technological breakthroughs in all of human history, and to the greatest advance in the welfare of the world's population ever achieved in such a short space of time." Critically discuss.
15. In the 1960s, the average United States citizen measured in purchasing power was 33 times richer than the average citizen of China (or up to 70 times as rich if measured at prevailing currency exchange rates). Both nations are large continental land masses with large populations, and as nations had historically virtually nothing to do with each other to that time. So why were United States citizens so much richer? Discuss. How and why this ratio has changed since the 1960s and what is the prospect for this ratio for the future?
16. "For centuries, from the Roman Empire, Genghis Khan, Spanish conquistadors, the British Empire, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union etc., it has seemed plausible that the road to riches is the exploitation of foreign peoples and their lands. But in the twentieth century it became apparent that industrial economies based on domestic production and consumption could get on better without colonies." Discuss.
17. "Today's economic optimists celebrate the global economy, and a hundred years ago globalization was celebrated in similar ways. But in 1914 the first age of globalization ended in the Two World Wars and the Great Depression. In the mayhem, an extreme anti-capitalist sect gained control of Russia and her empire, and three dictators, Stalin, Hitler and Mao, rose to control vast tracts of the great Eurasian landmass stretching from the English Channel to the China Sea.
These totalitarian regimes and pseudo-religious cults caused unquantifiable suffering and tens of millions of violent deaths. Could a similar fate befall the second age of globalization in which we live?" Critically discuss.
18. "Western civilization is more than just one thing; it is a package. Of course it is far from flawless, and it has its share of historical misdeeds, yet this package still seems to offer human societies the best available set of economic, social and political institutions - the ones most likely to unleash the individual human creativities capable of solving the problems facing the world in the 21st century. The future holds perhaps not the decline of civilization, but its creative transformation." Discuss.
19. 'In the last 200 years or so since 1800 human welfare has increased more than in all of the rest of the thousands of years of human history. In the next 100 years, so many big countries are expected to grow rapidly that economic growth and accumulating knowledge will raise the living standards of more people in more parts of the world than at any prior time in history." Discuss.
20. How did it happen that one civilization (Western Europe and its overseas settlements such as the United States) came to effectively rule the entire world since 1800, as no civilization had ever before been able to do in history? Is this rule likely to continue into the next 200 years? Critically discuss.