AEAweb: Journal Article Full-Text Access
Note to Institutional Subscribers: If you normally access AEAweb journal content via your university or firm's subscription and receive this page, please click
here. The most likely causes of this are a recently changed IP address, a new subscription, or the renewal of a lapsed institutional subscription. This page will stop appearing on the next synchronisation of the document delivery and authentication systems.
You may also click here for pay-per-view, Athens login and other access options .
AEA Members, please click the button below to access the login form:
Allen, Robert C. 2008. "A Review of Gregory Clark's
A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World."
,
46(4): 946-73.
Show Article Details
DOI: 10.1257/jel.46.4.946
Abstract:A Farewell to Alms advances striking claims about the economic history of the world.
These include (1) the preindustrial world was in a Malthusian preventive check equilibrium,
(2) living standards were unchanging and above subsistence for the last
100,000 years, (3) bad institutions were not the cause of economic backwardness,
(4) successful economic growth was due to the spread of "middle class" values from
the elite to the rest of society for "biological" reasons, (5) workers were the big gainers
in the British Industrial Revolution, and (6) the absence of middle class values, for
biological reasons, explains why most of the world is poor. The empirical support for
these claims is examined, and all are questionable.
Authors:
Allen, Robert C. (Nuffield College, Oxford U)
JEL Classifications:
N00: Economic History: General
If you are an AEA member and do not have an AEAweb login, please
click here.
If you would like to become an AEA member, please see our
membership page.
If you arrived at this page via a journal article link, you will be redirected to the pdf after successful login.
If your first login attempt fails, and you have recently signed up for access or have recently changed your password, you may need to wait a few moments and try again.
Please contact us at
notify@aeaweb.org with any problems or questions.
Contents of Current Issues
May 2013 AER
Spring 2013 JEP
May 2013 AEJ: Policy
May 2013 AEJ: Micro
April 2013 AEJ: Macro
April 2013 AEJ: Applied
March 2013 JEL
Virtual Field Journals
In the News:
The Huffington Post reports on a study addressing the influence of lifestyle factors on shrinking height in the elderly published in the April issue of AEJ: Applied Economics.
Michael Frakes' (Cornell Law School) article on medical liability standards from the February issue of the American Economic Review was discussed as part of a Bloomberg opinion piece on medical malpractice.
Slate Magazine recently discussed former AEA president, George Akerlof's classic behavioral research and a 2012 American Economic Review study conducted by German and Swiss researchers to explore how gifting can motivate some employees more than cash incentives do in the workplace.
Contact Us
