December, 2006

Final Reflections

Lawrence Harrison doesn’t have a hypothesis about culture and economic development. He has a hypothesis about the interaction between culture and institutions. Though he is not clear about this, this is what his argument implies, and this is the only thing that could explain why Chinese people have a good culture, yet China is extremely […]

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Final Comments

For Gregory Clark
Your repetition of the assertion “in 50 years the agenda of introducing culture into analysis of growth has not advanced one step from the state of the art of the 1950s” suggests that you may not be aware of the following books, which I commend to you:

David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed (1989)Francis […]

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The Basques and Chile

One factor in Chile’s exceptionalism that has not yet been mentioned is the profound Basque influence starting in the eighteen century. Arnold J. Bauer in Chilean Rural Society (Cambridge University Press, 1975) writes:
Between 1701 and 1810, some 24,000 immigrants arrived in Chile from Spain [about doubling the number of Spaniards] and forty-five percent of these […]

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A Plague on Both Your Houses

In my original response I criticized Lawrence Harrison’s advocacy of the key role of culture in growth on the grounds that “in 50 years the agenda of introducing culture into analysis of growth has not advanced one step from the state of the art of the 1950s.” I now feel that I owe equal […]

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More on Chile’s Head Start

Just a couple of things in reply to Robinson’s response.
First, the nineteenth century was very long. A hundred years. Robinson and I are talking about complete different historical periods. The free trade I mentioned, in which Chile was engaged, happened very early on, with public support for it being made explicit even […]

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Reply to Robinson on Botswana

[Lawrence Harrison asked Stephen Lewis, the editor of Botswana ex-president Quett Masire’s forthcoming autobiography, Memoirs of an African Democrat, to comment on the discussion of Botswana in James Robinson’s reply to Harrison’s lead essay. Lewis’ case study on Botswana is featured in Harrison’s book The Central Liberal Truth. — eds.]
Having spent a substantial part of […]

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Some Thoughts on Harrison and Hojman

In response to Lawrence Harrison, I agree that there are huge development problems in Africa, but I don’t see the evidence connecting this to culture. Botswana has been a great success, and it is true that a large proportion of GDP (about 40%) is diamonds, but diamonds are usually connected to political instability and poverty […]

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The Uniqueness of Chile

[Lead essayist Lawrence Harrison asked Chile expert David E. Hojman of the University of Liverpool to address James Robinson’s comments on Chile. Here they are. — ed.]
—
Robinson is wrong about Chile. Given the time constraints, I will give you a few lines which could possibly be followed, explored, developed, or expanded further.
Possibly Chile […]

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Response to Clark, Boettke, and Robinson

To Gregory Clark
I would never have written my essay had I known that it could be lethal for you. For I value our economic historians, prominently among them David Landes, who had this to say about The Centtral Liberal Truth: “Nothing is so important and tenacious as culture…in shaping economic performance…I can think of […]

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It’s Not Culture

James A. Robinson of the Harvard University Department of Government argues that Harrison’s measures are insufficient to establish that culture is the x-factor in economic development. For example, Robinson argues that the relative success of certain ethnic and religious minorities may be due to concessions from the majority group, and not the features of the minority culture. Also, Robinson asks, if the economic success of Chinese minorities in other countries is “because they have such a good culture, then why is China one of the world’s poorest countries?” And if Chile’s success lies in its distinctive culture, “then why did it manifest itself so recently?” Robinson concludes that “culture might matter, but doubters like me will not be convinced by the evidence here.”

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The How, The What, and The Why of the “Culture Matters” Thesis

In his reply to Lawrence Harrison’s lead essay, George Mason University economist Peter J. Boettke argues that it is not culture but institutions–”the rules of the game that govern the way that people interact with one another”–that are the primary determinant of economic growth. However, culture may be crucial, Boettke argues, since it is “a tool for the self-regulation of behavior” that may raise or lower the cost of monitoring and enforcing compliance with “the rules of the game.” And that can make the difference between the success or failure of growth-conducive institutions and policies such as “private property, freedom on contract, limited scope of regulation, monetary restraint, fiscal responsibility, and open trade.”

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The Universal Culture of Progress

In his reply to Harrison’s lead essay, University of California, Davis economist Gregory Clark writes, “I simultaneously want to endorse [Harrison’s] promotion of culture, and to run screaming from his lethal embrace.” While agreeing that the failure of purely institutional explanations of historical economic growth “opens the door … for culture,” Clark argues that “attempts to introduce culture into economic discussions so far have been generally either ad hoc, vacuous, blatantly false, or void of testability.” Clark points to great variation in economic performance within cultures and religions, and worries that Harrison’s “measures are not a pure probe into the essence of local cultures, but reflect institutions and economic environments that change the real possibilities for people.”

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Culture and Economic Development

In this month’s information-packed lead essay, Lawrence E. Harrison notes that the role of culture has been badly neglected in serious studies of economic devewlopment. But then, he asks, what explains “why, in multicultural countries where the economic opportunities and incentives are available to all, some ethnic or religious minorities do much better than majority populations?” Harrison reports some results of his recent Culture Matters Research Project, including the finding that “Protestant, Jewish, and Confucian societies do better than Catholic, Islamic, and Orthodox Christian societies…” Harrison provides a number of incisive country case studies, illustrating different ways pre-existing culture can produce economic results, and the ways policy and politics can transform culture.

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