[This is the full text of my interview with Vincent Bevins. An edited version was published in The New Republic.]  Let’s start with the obvious question. Does the elephant graph explain the victory of Brexit and Trump? Are globalization’s losers rebelling against the system that has been in place since theRead More

Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States has sparked a great deal of speculation. In this post, we will analyze the political viability of some of his proposals and explore the effects that their implementation may have on the United States and the rest of the world. Immigration:Read More

Published on October 28th on The Washington Post. To economic historians like Joel Mokyr, there’s nothing inevitable about the incredible wealth and health of the modern world. But for a spark in a little corner of Europe that ignited the Industrial Revolution — which spread incredible advances in technology and livingRead More

When we talk about Industrial protectionism, it is common to think of underdeveloped countries and, in particular, Latin American countries during the period of import-substitution industrialization. However, there are other historical cases of interest.  For example, during the second half of the 19th century, trade policy in the United StatesRead More

Economists have an image of practicality and worldliness not shared by physicists and poets. Some economists have earned this image. Others –myself and many of my colleagues here at Chicago– have not. I’m not sure whether you will take this as a confession or a boast, but we are basically story-tellers, creators ofRead More

Maria Sklodowska was born on November 7th, 1867, in Warsaw, Poland. Her parents were teachers. Poland was not a free country at the time, and Maria lived in the part of the country that was governed by Russia. She was a marvelous little girl – brilliant and full of curiosity.Read More

Douglass C. North earned himself a place in the pantheon of the most influential social scientists of all times. In 1959-1960, North was a founder of cliometrics, a group of economic historians that systematically applied statistical methods and economic theory to the study of history. However, by the late 1960s,Read More