If we go to the year 1960, it's very hard to come up with a metric of institutions that predicts which countries end up doing well. We really need a better measure of institutions, which we don't have yet,. And institutions will someday matter again but I'm looking for this in vain," he says.
Tyler Cowen and Jeffrey Sachs discuss the resource curse, why Russia failed and Poland succeeded, charter cities, Sach's China optimism, JFK, Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, whether Africa will be able to overcome the middle income trap, Paul Krugman, Sach's favorite novel, premature deindustrialization, and how to reform graduate economics education.
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