History Through the Lens of Economics
Andrew Leigh over-promises and under-delivers in his history of the world through the lens of economics. To be sure economics is particularly important but as Ecclesiastes says, ‘time and chance happens to all.” Economics gives us tools to help understand the world, such as incentives, diminishing marginal utility and sometimes, as behavioral economics has taught us, people aren’t as rational as the classical theory would predict.
He, of course, mentions many of the great economists from Smith to Keynes and Freidman, and Kahneman. There works clearly help explain the world. He also mentions the work of Jared Diamond on the importance of an economy residing along and east-west axis as opposed to a north-south axis. This helps to explain why the northern hemisphere has done so much better than the southern hemisphere, but what does that have to do with economics?
He fails to discuss how human beings can really screw up what apparently looks like a strong endowment. Witness the weakness of Russia and Argentina and the converse of South Korea and Japan.
My bottom line is if you want a very short overview of the role of economics in history, this book might be for you, but it leaves out much.
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