TILEC Club IO: Jens Prüfer

“Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich & the Middle East Did Not,” by Jared Rubin

In this book, Jared Rubin studies why the Middle East is so much less developed than the West. The book develops a general political economy/institutional economics framework and then applies it to a row of case studies, e.g. the introduction of the printing press in the 16th/ 17th century (successful in Europe, unsuccessful in the Middle East). I will present the core framework of the book, which is intuitive, consistent and implicitly also informs about the role of university researchers as advisors to policy makers: when can we (not) make a difference?

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