Why Nations Fail

particularly like to thank the co-organizers, Jim Alt and Ken
Shepsle, and our discussants at the conference: Robert
Allen, Abhijit Banerjee, Robert Bates, Stanley Engerman,
Claudia Goldin, Elhanan Helpman, Joel Mokyr, Ian Morris,
Şevket Pamuk, Steve Pincus, and Peter Temin. We are
also grateful to Melissa Dell, Jesús Fernández-Villaverde,
Sándor László, Suresh Naidu, Roger Owen, Dan Trefler,
Michael Walton, and Noam Yuchtman, who gave us
extensive comments at the conference and at many other
times.
We are also grateful to Charles Mann, Leandro Prados
de la Escosura, and David Webster for their expert advice.
During much of the process of researching and writing
this book we were both members of the Canadian Institute
for Advanced Research’s (CIFAR) program on Institutions,
Organizations, and Growth. We presented research related
to this book many times at CIFAR meetings and have
benefited hugely from the support of this wonderful
organization and the scholars that it brings together.
We also received comments from literally hundreds of
people in various seminars and conferences on the
material developed in this book, and we apologize for
failing to attribute properly any suggestion, idea, or insight
that we got from those presentations and discussions.
We are also very grateful to María Angélica Bautista,
Melissa Dell, and Leander Heldring for their superb
research assistance on this project.
Last, but certainly not least, we have been very fortunate
to have a wonderful, insightful, and extremely supportive
editor, John Mahaney. John’s comments and suggestions
have greatly improved our book, and his support and
enthusiasm for the project made the last year and a half
much more pleasant and less taxing than it might have
been.

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