In his recent Mass Flourishings, Edmund Phelps makes a strong and eloquent plea for a more dynamic economy, which he sees not only as a key for economic performance, but also as necessary for what he calls “the good life.” This review essay evaluates those claims in the light of economic history.

This essay reviews and criticizes Vermeij's Nature: An Economic History and places it in the context of evolutionary economics. Vermeij presents a natural history written in what he considers economic terms and argues that biologists should know more about economics. While the exchanges between economics and biology can sometimes be hazardous and misleading, quite a bit could be learned by economists from reading this book.

There is a growing consensus that in all cases of successful and unsuccessful economic growth, institutions mattered (Elhanan Helpman