ANNE MCCANTS & DANIEL SELIGSON

Nature, Culture and Development

Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/97302702555

Abstract
The New Institutional Economics makes the incompatible claims that institutions are the rules of the game and that institutions evolve together with the economy. A corollary to the former, at odds with 24 centuries of scholarship that began with Aristotle, is that nature, e.g. climate, geography, and natural resources, is a minor rather than a major driver of disparities in the wealth of nations.  Further, the NIE cannot resolve the paradox, noted by North and seconded by Williamson, that culture and social norms, or what it calls informal constraints, have a pervasive influence on long-term development. In this talk we describe a dynamical or coevolutionary theory of the economy and its institutions that predicts that nature and culture are the primary drivers of development. This resolves the just-noted paradox and explains that the correlation of institutions and economic performance is just that, a correlation and not causation. We apply this theory to construct a compact, 5-variable model of development in 177 nations whose explained variance approaches 80%.

Bios
Anne McCants is Professor of History and Economic History at MIT where she directs the Concourse Program for the integration of humanities in the science core.  She is currently the President of the International Economic History Association. Her publications range across research in social welfare in the Dutch Republic, European historical demography, material culture/consumption, technology in social context, and global living standards.   She serves as an editor for both Social Science History and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History.

Daniel Seligson received his PhD in physics from Berkeley in 1983. He spent nearly 30 years developing, managing, and investing in semiconductor and genomics technologies. Since 2015, he has devoted himself fully to matters of nature, culture, and development. He has been awarded 8 US Patents.