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[...] warehouses are potentially a source of vast amounts of employment for less-skilled Indians (of which there are hundreds of millions). Yet the falling cost of simple robotics and the increasing power of computing means that many of those jobs may never be created. Instead a very small number o…

[...] we once devoted most of our household budgets to physical things: food and drink, clothing and furniture. Now we spend vast amounts on things like education and healthcare, or on housing [...]

[...] social capital is the indispensable factor. Successful countries have good institutions, such as strong and stable governments committed to protecting personal property rights. Social capital supports the evolution and development of growth-boosting institutions, which in turns support the co…

[...] Big, skilled places are good at making workers more productive. Workers in places like Silicon Valley earn a hefty wage premium over similar workers in other cities, but new arrivals don't get the premium all at once. Instead it builds over time: evidence that the city is contributing to th…

Hopefully, thinking about society in this way allows us to better understand differences in economic performance. Social capital evolves over long periods of time, lives in the heads of those operating within society (but is often embodied in institutions, such as governments or firms), and influen…