The book Why Nations Fail is excellent reading but fails to persuade. It is good at explaining why Nations fail, but not so at explaining why some escape ranging from Japan to China and including Hong Kong and Singapore and Taiwan
I recently engaged in a discussion (a twittercussion) with Leah Boustan of Princeton over the “popularity” of economic history within economics (depicted below). As one can see from the purple section, it is as popular as those hard candies that grandparents give out on Halloween (to be fair, I like those candies just like I do economic history). More importantly, the share seems to be smaller than at the peak of 1980s. It also seems like the Nobel prize going to Fogel and North had literally no effects on the subfield’s popularity. Yet, I keep hearing that “economic history is back”. After all, the Bates Clark medal went to Donaldson of Stanford this year which should confirm that economic history is a big deal. How can this be reconciled with the figure depicted below?
As I explained in my twittercussion with Leah, I think that there is a popularity for using…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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