Send us a text We trace how Adam Smith solves a historical puzzle: why Europe’s path to prosperity inverted the “natural order,” and how commerce quietly dissolved feudal power to make room for liberty. The story follows incentives, from primogeniture and entail to charters, free towns, and the market’s “silent and insensible” revolution. institutions as congealed preferences and elite incentiveswhy Smith’s natural order inverts in Europethe physiocrats’ growth model and Smith’s critiqueSol...
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Send us a text We trace how Adam Smith solves a historical puzzle: why Europe’s path to prosperity inverted the “natural order,” and how commerce quietly dissolved feudal power to make room for liberty. The story follows incentives, from primogeniture and entail to charters, free towns, and the market’s “silent and insensible” revolution. institutions as congealed preferences and elite incentiveswhy Smith’s natural order inverts in Europethe physiocrats’ growth model and Smith’s critiqueSol...
When Bribes Become the System: Understanding Lock-In
The Answer Is Transaction Costs
25 minutes
2 months ago
When Bribes Become the System: Understanding Lock-In
Send us a text Corruption persists not because people like it, but because it becomes embedded in the incentive structure of the state, creating feedback loops that reinforce themselves and resist reform. • A prebend is a type of benefice historically given to clergymen, now a useful concept for understanding corruption in developing nations • Douglas North extended Coase's concept of transaction costs to explain why institutions matter in economics and politics • Bad institutions crea...
The Answer Is Transaction Costs
Send us a text We trace how Adam Smith solves a historical puzzle: why Europe’s path to prosperity inverted the “natural order,” and how commerce quietly dissolved feudal power to make room for liberty. The story follows incentives, from primogeniture and entail to charters, free towns, and the market’s “silent and insensible” revolution. institutions as congealed preferences and elite incentiveswhy Smith’s natural order inverts in Europethe physiocrats’ growth model and Smith’s critiqueSol...
