Guido Taberlini presents the Economica Phillips 2022 Lecture.
Why was Europe and not China the hub of modern economic growth and of modern democracy? And how can we explain the divergent evolution of political institutions between these two areas? The lecture will emphasize how the divergent institutional trajectories of China and Europe emerged at the turn of the first millenium from different social organizations and cultural traditions. Both in China and in Europe, state institutions were built on top of other social organizations. But during the Middle Ages, when the State was absent or not far reaching, society was organized in very different ways in these two parts of the world. In China, most local public goods were provided by kin-based social networks, like clans. In Europe, cooperation took place within self-governing corporate organizations like monasteries, universities, guilds, free towns. These different social structures left an indelible imprint in the subsequent evolution of legal and political institutions, and contribute to explain the Great Divergence between China and Europe.
Meet our speaker and chair
Guido Tabellini is a professor of economics at Bocconi University, he is recipient of the Intesa Sanpaolo Chair in Political Economics from July 2013. He received the Yrjo Jahnsson award by the European Economic Association, and he has been President of the European Economic Association.
Ricardo Reis is the A.W. Phillips Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. Recent and Director of the centre For Macroeconomics. Honours include the 2022 Carl Menger prize, the 2021 Yrjo Jahnsson medal, election to the Econometric Society in 2019, the 2017 BdF/TSE junior prize, and the 2016 Bernacer prize.
More about this event
The Economica Phillips lecture series was inaugurated in 2007.
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