by Harvard econ professor David Landes is in the latest Journal of Economic Perspectives. The abstract:

In the history of technological development, why didn't other regions keep up with Europe? This is an important question, as one learns almost as much from failure as from success. The one civilization that was in a position to match and even anticipate the European achievement was China. China had two chances: first, to generate a continuing, self-sustaining process of scientific and technological advance on the basis of its indigenous traditions and achievements; and second, to learn from European science and technology once the foreign “barbarians” entered the Chinese domain in the sixteenth century. China failed both times. What explains the first failure? I stress the role of the market: the fact that enterprise was free in Europe while China lacked a free market and institutionalized property rights; that in Europe innovation worked and paid, while the Chinese state was always stepping in to interfere with private enterprise. As for the second failure, China's cultural triumphalism combined with petty downward tyranny made it a singularly bad learner. [Emphasis added.]

The piece can be downloaded for $7.50, an excellent development. In the past, JEP articles could be had only by members of the American Economic Association or through JSTOR, which is a great service, but available only through academic institutions. Thus, for all practical purposes they did not exist for us Internet-spoiled types, who would not dream of going to a library just to read an article. To have the work available for a fee is welcome indeed, and perhaps a harbinger of a world in which serious academic work will be available on-line at reasonable cost. As Nicholas Carr keeps pointing out, crowds may have virtues, but serious intellectual work is not one of them.

Thanks for the link to Cafe Hayek and Don Boudreaux, Chair of the GMU Economics Department and member of the IPCentral Academic Advisory Council. Cafe Hayek has some interesting comments, too.

For a caveat, see a comment on the China Law Blog:

I do get the sense that Landes isn't looking at the latest thinking by Sinologists. What's happened since the 1980's, is that huge archives have opened up and that is really transforming the way people think about China in the 1750's. For example, the idea that China had no legal system or system or property rights just dies once you go through court archives and read through case after case in which people are trying to enforce property rights through courts, and those archives really only started to be looked at in the 1980's.

posted by James DeLong @ 7:59 AM | International

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