Book Reviews

2014 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 1189-1191
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Graduate School ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Professor Emeritus ◽  
The West ◽  
Catching Up ◽  
History Of ◽  
Great Divergence ◽  
The Difference

Branko Milanovic, a Presidential Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center, reviews “Mixed Fortunes: An Economic History of China, Russia, and the West”, by Vladimir Popov. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Provides an interpretation of the ""Great Divergence" and the ""Great Convergence" stories, analyzing why Western countries grew rich and developing countries struggled to keep up, focusing on China and Russia. Discusses how the West became rich--stylized facts and a literature review; why the West became rich first and why some developing countries are catching up, while others are not; Chinese and Russian economies under central planning--why the difference in outcomes?; Chinese and Russian economies since reforms--transformational recession in Russia and acceleration of growth in China; and growth miracles and failures--lessons for development economics. Popov is with the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations, Professor Emeritus at the New Economic School in Moscow, and Professor in the Graduate School of International Business at the Russian Presidential Academy of the National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow.”

Revising the Framework: Energy and Eurasian History

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William R. Thompson ◽  
Leila Zakhirova
Keyword(s):  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The West ◽  
Catching Up ◽  
System Leaders ◽  
New Energy ◽  
Great Divergence ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Western Eurasia ◽  
Framework Energy

This chapter first theorizes as if each system leader has been similar in terms of the resource foundations it has brought to the arena and what it has been able to do with those foundations. Earlier leaders were much weaker than later leaders. What accounts for the difference? Our answer is that system leaders have had variable claims to leads in commerce, technology, and energy. When they combined all three, they became very powerful. The chapter then addresses one of the central issues of Big History: the swinging of the socioeconomic, military, and political lead from western Eurasia to eastern Eurasia and back to western Eurasia and North America in what is sometimes referred to as the “Great Divergence.” This oscillation was put in motion by the discovery of agricultural techniques that gave the West a lead to innovate all sorts of things. Gradually the East caught up, until at one point Rome and Han China were roughly equal. After Rome declined and the Han Empire fragmented, China came back in the Sui–Tang–Song dynasty period, while western Europe remained fragmented. However, the medieval Chinese lead did not persist. Ultimately, the West was able to forge ahead by combining new energy sources and technology. Now, China may be catching up once again.

Searching for new Sources of growth. Are the Developing Countries Catching up with the Developed ones?

2015 ◽  
pp. 30-53
Author(s):  
V. Popov
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Gdp Per Capita ◽  
The West ◽  
Catching Up ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Economic Divergence ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Relative Standing

This paper examines the trajectory of growth in the Global South. Before the 1500s all countries were roughly at the same level of development, but from the 1500s Western countries started to grow faster than the rest of the world and PPP GDP per capita by 1950 in the US, the richest Western nation, was nearly 5 times higher than the world average and 2 times higher than in Western Europe. Since 1950 this ratio stabilized - not only Western Europe and Japan improved their relative standing in per capita income versus the US, but also East Asia, South Asia and some developing countries in other regions started to bridge the gap with the West. After nearly half of the millennium of growing economic divergence, the world seems to have entered the era of convergence. The factors behind these trends are analyzed; implications for the future and possible scenarios are considered.

The Early History of Financial Economics, 1478–1776. By Geoffrey Poitras. Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar, 2000. Pp. x, 522.

2002 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 268-269
Author(s):  
Larry Neal
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Financial Analysis ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Financial History ◽  
X 522 ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Simon Fraser University

Economic historians usually have to explain to their economist colleagues the difference between economic history, which focuses on facts, and history of economic thought, which focuses on ideas. Our colleagues in finance departments, typically fascinated by episodes in financial history treated by economic historians, are bound to be disappointed in the lack of attention given to the development of ideas in finance by historians of economic thought. Geoffrey Poitras, a professor of finance at Simon Fraser University, makes a valiant effort to remedy these oversights in his collection of vignettes that highlight the sophistication of financial instruments and analysts of financial markets well before the time of Adam Smith. Starting in 1478 with the publication of the Treviso Arithmetic, a typical textbook of commercial arithmetic for Italian merchants, and ending with brief snippets from the Wealth of Nations, Poitras treats the reader to a fascinating potpourri of excerpts from various manuals, brief biographies of pioneers in financial analysis, and historical discursions on foreign-exchange and stock markets.

scholarly journals A Recent History of 14C, 137Cs, 210Pb, and 241Am Accumulation at Two Irish Peat Bog Sites: an East Versus West Coast Comparison

Radiocarbon ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 43 (2B) ◽  
pp. 517-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
D Gallagher ◽  
E J McGee ◽  
P I Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
West Coast ◽  
East Coast ◽  
Similar Sequence ◽  
The West ◽  
Nuclear Weapons Testing ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Ombrotrophic Peat ◽  
Coast Site

Data on radiocarbon (14C), 137Cs, 210Pb, and 241Am levels in an ombrotrophic peat sequence from a montane site on the east coast of Ireland are compared with data from a similar sequence at an Atlantic peatland site on the west coast. The 14C profiles from the west and east coasts show a broadly similar pattern. Levels increase from 100 pMC or less in the deepest horizons examined, to peak values at the west and east coast sites of 117 ± 0.6 pMC and 132 ± 0.7 pMC, respectively (corresponding to maximal fallout from nuclear weapons testing around 1964), thereafter diminishing to levels of 110–113 pMC near the surface. Significantly, peak levels at the east coast site are considerably higher than corresponding levels at the west coast site, though both are lower than reported peak values for continental regions. The possibility of significant 14C enrichment at the east coast site due to past discharges from nuclear installations in the UK seems unlikely. The 210Pbex inventory at the east coast site (6500 Bq m−2) is significantly higher than at the west coast (5300 Bq m−2) and is consistent with the difference in rainfall at the two sites. Finally, 137Cs and 241Am inventories at the east coast site also exceed those at the west coast site by similar proportions (east:west ratio of approximately 1:1.2).

scholarly journals Foucault: Madness and Surveillance in Warsaw

2018 ◽  
pp. 174-190
Author(s):  
Piotr Sobolczyk
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
The West ◽  
Biographical Data ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Polish Experience ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Communist Countries

The paper revises the biographical data about Michel Foucault’s stay in Poland in 1958-1959. The main inspiration comes from the recent very well documented literary reportage book by Remigiusz Ryziński, Foucault in Warsaw. Ryziński’s aim is to present the data and tell the story, not to analyse the data within the context of Foucault’s work. This paper fulfills this demand by giving additional hypotheses as to why Polish authorities expelled Foucault from Poland and what the relation was between communism and homosexuality. The Polish experience, the paper compels, might have been inspiring for many of Foucault’s ideas in his Madness and Civilization, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality. On the other hand the author points to the fact that Foucault recognized the difference between the role of the intellectual in the West and in communist countries but did not elaborate on it. In this paper the main argument deals with the idea of sexual paranoia as decisive, which is missing in Foucault's works, although it is found in e.g. Guy Hocquenghem.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document