Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, first published in 2012, is a book by American economists Daron Acemoglu (an MIT prof) and James Robinson. Based on the statements of the new institutional economics, Robinson and Acemoglu see in political and economic institutions — a set of rules and enforcement mechanisms that exist in society — the main reason for differences in the economic and social development of different states, considering, that other factors (geography, climate, genetics, culture, religion, elite ignorance) are secondary.

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