An abiding question for economists through the ages, from The Wealth of Nations (Smith 2012/1776) to the more recent bestseller, Why Nations Fail (Acemoğlu and Robinson, 2013) has been the source of prosperity for nations. What makes some nations thrive, and others not? For Edmund Phelps, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in economics, the paradigmatic instance of the unleashing of prosperity at a global level (‘mass flourishing’) is the birth of modern capitalism in Britain and the US, and it is the question of the psychological roots of this material progress – and its rise and fall – that he addresses in his current scholarship. His particular focus is on the invisible forces driving the engine of growth and innovation – dynamism.
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348 – 355
DOI
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Issues
Also in this issue:
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Agnes Horvath, Magic and the Will to Science: A Political Anthropology of Liminal Technicality
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Gibson Burrell, Ronald Hartz, David Harvie, Geoff Lightfoot, Simon Lilley and Friends, Shaping for Mediocrity: The Cancellation of Critical Thinking at our Universities
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Bas de Boer, How Scientific Instruments Speak: Postphenomenology and Technological Mediations in Neuroscientific Practice
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Bjørn Lomborg, False Alarm
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How does innovation arise in the bicycle sector? The users’ role and their betrayal in the case of the ‘gravel bike’
Edmund Phelps, Raicho Bojilov, Hian Teck Hoon and Gylfi Zoega, Dynamism: The Values That Drive Innovation, Job Satisfaction and Economic Growth
Book Review