Joel Mokyr. Photo courtesy of Northwestern U. Economic historian Joel Mokyr’s work explains how ideas and culture generate compounding technological progress that can accumulate and sustain economic g...

Originally posted in 2017

The real story why medieval Europe was covered in castles

Baronial castles in medieval Europe

A Guest Post

Slate chief political correspondent Jamelle Bouie set off a heated online debate with a series of tweets[1] claiming “the concept of race was birthed by the Enlightenment,”[2] which then sparked a ful...

Or why protests alone usually don't bring down autocratic regimes

A longer version of my book review

I've just finished watching the second season of Wolf Hall, The Mirror and the Light, adapted from Hillary Mantel's 2020 novel of the same name.

This Open Access Handbook provides a timely overview of recent developments and broad orientations in new institutional economics.

Our project on the effects of forced labor in colonial Peru began years ago, when I, Leticia, was still a graduate student.

This Open Access Handbook provides a timely overview of recent developments and broad orientations in new institutional economics.

By Jack Paine (Emory University), Xiaoyan Qiu (Washington University in St. Louis) and Joan Ricart-Huguet (Loyola University Maryland

(March 2025) - This essay reviews two recent books on economic growth: Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin's How the World Became Rich and J. Bradford DeLong's Slouching Towards Utopia. Both books offer rich ...