The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die

Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, discussed the falling quality of American institutions in his talk entitled "The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die." His book of the same name is available on Amazon. Ferguson focuses on China and the United States as examples of institutional improvement in the developing world and institutional degeneration in the developed world, emphasizing economics, politics, and education policies. Ferguson's book Civilization, which discusses the "six killer applications for Western civilization," is also available on Amazon.

[bastiatintheandes]

Very insightful, brilliant Niall Ferguson.

[cpawp]

Is there no video of a Q&A-session afterwards?

[MichaelFlynn]

It took 8 years to recover from the GFC ... All this data is out of date. I like Niall but his really does pick and choose from his data.

[johnkim]

I agree with many of Niall Ferguson's viewpoints in terms of policy as a conservative Republican!

          However, I disagree with some of the assertions he makes and forms his conclusions. Firstly, he doesn't address how developing economies are bound to grow faster than developed economies due to the catch-up effect and how such effect accounts for a great amount of relatively faster growth that the developing economies have seen. He then overtly argues that institutions influence societies when in fact its societies which influence institutions! Mr. Ferguson also doesn't address how some institutions such as labor unions have a lower participation percentage than before because we live in different times with such institutions meaning less. Finally, Mr. Ferguson doesn't address how many of the calculations where the national debt greatly overtakes GDP have been made with very conservative and limited economic growth in mind. If the economy even grows a little faster than his very negative predictions, the problems he states wouldn't be as bad! And the economic consensus is nearly unanimous it would!

Make no mistake! Brilliant scholar but not a economist!