Mixed Fortunes: An Economic History of China, Russia, and the West

摘要

In development economics, there are no three more important questions than (1) Why did the West get ahead of everybody else? (2) Why did Russia fail to catch up? and (3) Why is China succeeding now? Vladimir Popov endeavors, in his slender volume of fewer than 200 pages, to answer all three. There are very few economists as well placed to do so as Popov, currently at the United Nations, and previously a professor at the New School of Economics in Moscow and Carleton University, Ottawa, and lifelong student of China. Let me first give Popov's answers to the three questions before I discuss them.