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My review of Greif, Mokyr and Tabellini’s book Two Paths to Prosperity: Culture and Institutions in China, 1000-2000 has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement. Pdf available here.
In the Dublin Review of Books, May 29th 2026:
The shadow of Edward Gibbon and Adam Smith hangs over two contemporary efforts to explain what makes nations wealthy and what makes empires decline.
The full article is here.
On reading all Jane Austen’s novels in quick succession:
At the beginning of January 2025 I decided to read all six of the main novels of Jane Austen, whose 250th birthday falls later this year (on December 16th). I began with Mansfield Park (MP), continued with Pride and Prejudice (PP), Emma (E), Sense and Sensibility (SS), Northanger Abbey (NA), and concluded with Persuasion (P). Although I had previously read all of them, some several times, I had never read them close together. Several things stood out for me as a result:
Inspired by this news story from London….Image created by OpenAI’s DALL·E.
“Steady on, Jeeves!” I exclaimed.
“Sir?” He was icily polite.
“Are you feeling quite yourself, Jeeves?” I asked, with what I hoped he would interpret as a tenderly solicitous air.
“Sir?” A little slower this time, with the tiniest hint of menace.
“I’m sorry, Jeeves, it must be me. I thought you were hallucinating. I should have known better.”
“Sir?” He sounded bewildered.
“Yes, Jeeves”, I said, relieved at last to have found an explanation. “I need one of your pick-me-ups. It was quite a night, last night. I’m the one who’s hallucinating, not you. Forget I mentioned it.”
“May I ask what your hallucination consisted in, sir?”
“Yes, of course. Quite absurd, really. I thought you said….”
“Sir?”
“You’ll think me ridiculous, I know. Rather embarrassing to admit, really. But I thought you said…”
“Yes, sir?”
“I thought you said….no, ha ha, I can barely utter it…I thought you said the Drones Club…”
“Sir?”
“I thought you said the Drones Club had voted to admit lady members.”
There was an awkward silence. I wished the ground would open and swallow me up.
I began to stutter. “Er, er…absurd of course..”
“No sir”, said Jeeves – even more icily, if that were possible. Who’s the chap, Beer or Lear or someone, who goes out on the icy heath? I know how the fellow felt.
“I told you I was hallucinating”.
“It was the Garrick Club, sir.”
I reached out to steady myself against the wall.
“There it goes again, Jeeves. I’m still hallucinating. Get me that pick-me-up, quickly, please.”
“As you wish, sir.”
“It’s getting worse, Jeeves. This time I thought you said it was the Garrick.”
“It was, sir.”
It was with a surprising degree of calm that, some minutes later, I noted a gradual slowing-down of the stars that had begun to spin around me upon hearing Jeeves’s words. The pick-me-up he had pressed to my lips had something to do with it, no doubt. I had sunk back onto the chaise-longue. Eventually the blur in the drawing-room around me began to clear.
“I say, Jeeves!”
“Yes, sir?”
“What is it those classical chaps are always saying? O tempora…?”
“O mores, sir.”
“That’s it, Jeeves! If even the Garrick….I mean, if even the Garrick, well we’re sunk, aren’t we?”
“Indeed, sir”.
“I mean dash it, Jeeves. Where’s a fellow to go to escape the….”
“Yes, sir?”
“The, the, what’s the word I want? Something beginning with E”.
“Entanglements, sir?”
“That’s the word I want. The entanglements of the fair sex. I mean to say, if the fair sex are to be found skulking even in the Garrick, there’ll be nowhere to hide!”
“Precisely, sir”.
“Entanglements everywhere!”
“Indeed, sir.”
There was another silence. I tried to look philosophical, but I fear that my eyes were swivelling. Like that patient old Pop Glossop described to me once, a most enlightening conversation until it dawned on me that he was comparing the patient’s state of mind favourably with that of yours truly.
Jeeves coughed, discreetly. I recognized the signs.
“What is it, Jeeves? I can tell you’re hatching something. You look like a gull sitting on an egg.”
From the tiniest flicker of an eyebrow, I could tell that Jeeves was deeply wounded. But he is made of sterner stuff, and the moment passed.
“I fear, sir, the days are gone when one could escape entanglements at the Garrick, even without the presence of lady members.”
“I say, Jeeves, you don’t mean….?”
“Precisely, sir”.
“What’s that thing about bread, you know, the loaf that durst not something-or-other…?”
“The love that durst not speak its name, sir”.
“That’s it, Jeeves. I say, we’re really torpedoed below the waterline now, aren’t we? Though, come to think of it, that’s not the metaphor…”
“I would not venture to describe the situation in quite such apocalyptic terms, sir.”
“Oh you bally well wouldn’t, would you? What makes you so jolly confident, may I ask?”
Jeeves coughed again. I have learned to pay special attention when he does that.
“If I may make so bold, sir…”
“Yes, Jeeves?”
“I have in recent weeks become engaged, sir, in what, were I of the apocalyptic turn of mind that your lordship so recently expressed, I might have described as just such an ‘entanglement’, but which I would now rather express as a most happy state of circumstances, sir.”
I tried to parse that one. Jeeves’s pick-me-up wasn’t helping.
“I say, Jeeves, you don’t mean…?”
“I do, sir”.
I paused. And then, because pausing seemed to be doing me some good, I paused again.
I examined the situation from every angle.
“Well, Jeeves, I must say, I hope you’ll both be very happy….”
“Thank you, sir”.
“And, for the avoidance of all confusion, am I to understand that the fairer sex are in no way involved in this, er, entanglement?”
“I think it unfortunate, sir, that in answering in the affirmative I might be thought to doubt the fairness of the gentleman in question”.
“I see, Jeeves.”
“Thank you, sir.”
It was a wiser, but not after all a sadder Bertram who sidled into the bar at the Drones that evening. I had done a lot of what I believe is called thinking. Not much of it in the Drones, I grant you. But I sensed that changes were in the air.
“I say, Pongo!” I exclaimed, spying him deep in thought over a brandy-and-soda in a corner Chesterfield. “I’ve got a rather strange question for you!”
Pongo turned a jaundiced air on Bertram, as if to wonder morosely when my questions had ever been less than strange.
I coughed slightly, before proceeding. I’ve noticed Jeeves does that sometimes, and it gives what he says a certain something. What’s that word beginning with G?
I couldn’t find the G-word, but I found another in its place.
“I say Pongo, you don’t know anyone who might be willing to put me up for the Garrick, do you?”
From Pongo’s startled look I understood that I was going to have to explain it all to him from the beginning.
First, links to some short (one-paragraph) unpublished reviews of books I enjoyed and would recommend to at least some readers (I include here only books that stand out from the majority I read). There are only a few of these now (August 2026), but I will update them regularly as I read more.
Short reviews of recommended fiction.
Short reviews of recommended non-fiction.
Next, here are links to longer reviews I published in 2022-2026, beginning with the most recent:
“Religious Doctrine and Politics”, a review of three books on Islam and politics in the modern world, in Perspectives on Politics, June 2026, available under open access here. Further details here.
“Corporate Responsibility”, a review of Greif, Mokyr and Tabellini’s Two Paths to Prosperity, Times Literary Supplement, 12th June 2026.
“Messy Versus Tidy”, a review of Goliath’s Curse by Luke Kemp and Peak Human, by Johan Norberg, Dublin Review of Books, 29th May 2026.
David Lay Williams: The Greatest of All Plagues: How Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx, in European Historical Quarterly, 55(3), 2025.
Colin Mayer: Capitalism and Crises: How to Fix Them, in Society, 23 May 2025.
Charles Hecker: Zero Sum: The Arc of International Business in Russia, in the Times Literary Supplement, 9 May 2025.
Robert Eisen: Jews, Judaism, and Success: How Religion Paved the Way to Modern Jewish Achievement
“O lucky man! What poker players do and don’t have in common with plutocrats”, a view of Nate Silver’s On The Edge: The Art of Risking Everything, in the Times Literary Supplement, 22 August 2024.
“Thomas Nagel: Moral Feelings, Moral Reality, and Moral Progress”, in Society, 06 February 2024.
This is part of a symposium on Nagel’s book; the other (gated) contributions to the symposium can be found here.
“Things can only get better? The ambivalent impact of innovation on society”, a review of Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson: Power and Progress: Our thousand-year struggle over technology and prosperity, in The Times Literary Supplement, July 14, 2023.
“Trouble in paradise. Why is economic progress so little cause for celebration?”, a review of J. Bradford DeLong: Slouching Towards Utopia: An economic history of the twentieth century, in The Times Literary Supplement, 23 September 2022.
“Thomas Piketty: A Brief History of Inequality”, in Society, 31 January 2023.
“Please sir, can I have quite a lot more?”, a review of Sebastian Mallaby: The Power Law: venture capital and the art of disruption, The Times Literary Supplement, 18th February 2022.
De 2008 à 2021 j’ai fait une série de chroniques dans Le Monde.
Lire toutes les chroniques:
“La rigueur, potion amère et inefficace”, Le Monde, 12 December 2011.
“Chers créanciers, veuillez attacher vos ceintures!”, Le Monde, 10 October 2011.
“Faut-il légaliser la corruption?”, Le Monde, 24 May 2011.
“C’est la faute des agences de notation”, Le Monde, 22 March 2011.
“Un code d’éthique à l’intention des économistes”, Le Monde, 24 January 2011.
“Etats-Unis – Chine: l’intoxiqué et le dealer”, Le Monde, 16 November 2010.
“Rentrée littéraire: comment choisir le bon roman?”, Le Monde, 14 September 2010.
“Ce sont les banques que l’on a sauvées, pas la Grèce, Le Monde, 18 May 2010.
“La démocratie de l’ascenseur, Le Monde, 23 May 2010.
“La carte musique contre l’innovation”, Le Monde, 26 January 2010.
“Petits gestes écologiques entre amis”, Le Monde, 15 December 2009.
“Le plan santé d’Obama, un cas d’école”, Le Monde, 8 September 2009.
“Affreuse nationalisation”, Le Monde, 28 April 2009.
“Darwin contre le darwinisme”, Le Monde, 17 February 2009.
“Après les banques, les Etats bientôt à la peine”, Le Monde, 20 January 2009.
“Relance: les lobbies à la manoeuvre”, Le Monde, 16 December 2008.
“Nationalisations à durée déterminée”, Le Monde, 14 October 2008.
“Le marché immobilier a besoin d’un plafond”, Le Monde, 16 September 2008.
Here are two of my published papers on the economics of infectious disease (both co-authored with Alice Mesnard):
Escaping epidemics through migration? Journal of Public Economics 2009.
Here are some press articles and blog posts I have written on Covid-19:
This is the title of a post on VoxEU authored jointly with Alice Mesnard and accessible here:
https://voxeu.org/article/easing-lockdown-digital-applications-can-help
This is the title given by Project Syndicate to my op-ed piece about microeconomics teaching. The home page of the INET curriculum project is here.
