Lessons from the Gulag? Enemies of the people had entrepreneurial spirit
A recent study mapping the link between gulags and regional growth in Russia can teach us something about reviving our own left behind towns, writes economist Paul Ormerod One of the first academic articles published by the American Economic Association in 2025 began, almost certainly for the first time ever in the history of this […]
History shows why robots won’t destroy our jobs
Economics is often described as the dismal science, but it often contains cheerful material. A paper by the leading American economic historian Joel Mokyr made for exuberant holiday reading. Written for the top Journal of Economic Perspectives, it is entirely in English and contains not a single mathematical symbol. Mokyr examines the history of anxieties […]
