Comment by kome | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kome | Hacker News Reader

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Terrible decision. Very bad and sloppy economics, a simplified version of what sociology and political science have been doing much better for over 40 years, as if before these crucial contributions we had no idea that institutions, forms of power and social conflict affect economic outcomes.

Branko Milanovic has aptly and rather amusingly defined Acemoglu's naive theorizing as "Wikipedia entries with regressions" https://glineq.blogspot.com/2014/08/my-take-on-acemoglu-robi... and he is right.

Acemoglu's strand of institutional social science is known to be painfully racist and clueless about realities on the ground https://africasacountry.com/2016/09/africa-why-western-econo... The narrative that you can get economic growth with "good institutions" is a fable, and cases like China are also completely outside their narrative. Not only is their narrative historically inaccurate, if not ideological, it can't explain why Western economies like the US have prospered despite being as corrupt as China is today.

Here is what your boy Branko Milanovic says: https://x.com/BrankoMilan/status/1845850368221032590

> Good decision. They deserve it. Obviously, there is a lot to disagree with in their work, but AJR initial papers were excellent, and broadened economic work to include politics and economic history. Congratulations!

There’s nothing racist about stating that strong institutions and rule of law lead to economic success.

It’s an obvious truth, which many Africans reject for some reason. I’m Nigerian, and my country is a clear example of how excessive corruption and dependence on a natural resource (oil) makes a country mediocre.

Dan Rogger published an interesting paper 13 years ago digging into this from a Civil Service standpoint [0]

Some of the recommendations were implemented, but it's still very much a work in progress.

[0] - https://www.danrogger.com/files/survey%20reports/Nigeria%20C...

> defined Acemoglu's naive theorizing

It sounds like you are parroting arguments without explaining those arguments.

"Wikipedia entries with regressions" is a facile argument that can be applied to Picketty and Milanovic as well.

Plus, Milanovic congratulated AJR and agreed to a number of their initial works in the space (which are the ones that won them the Nobel)

> The narrative that you can get economic growth with "good institutions" is a fable

Bullshit. We don't invest in Uganda or Kenya because we know we won't be able to get a contract enforced.

A major reason FDI to PRC skyrocketed in the 2000s was because individual provinces worked on building SEZs with ease of contract enforcement, as well as a number of harmonizing business regulation reforms (eg. the Guiding Cases Project).

And that same FDI outflow from China that we are now seeing is due to the opaqueness that now permeates the judicial and regulatory environemnt in China after a number of backwards reforms in 2018-22.

> it can't explain why Western economies like the US have prospered despite being as corrupt as China is today.

Over a century of major reforms and regulations.

This was a major reason why the PRC began the Guiding Cases project.

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