Interview with Joel Mokyr: Big Topics in Long-Run Growth

Tyler Cowen serves as interlocutor in “Joel Mokyr on Clans, Corporations, and a Culture of Growth” (Conversations with Tyler, July 8, 2026). Mokyr (Nobel, ’25) has a genius for looking at broad trends, and then sorting out kinds of explanations are most plausible. Here are a few points that caught my eye. Mokyr has a new book out called Two Paths to Prosperity: Culture and Institutions in Europe and China, 1000–2000, written with Avner Greif, and Guido Tabellini. Thus, some of the interview focuses on the question of how economic prosperity in Europe overtook that of China during these centuries. [I]f you look at the world, say, around 800, at the time of Charlemagne, the difference between Europe and China isn’t very large. At some point, during the Middle Ages, you can see this divergence getting started. What’s happening is that, in Europe, there is more and more of a decline in the extended family or the extended kinship group, we call it clan, and instead, people get together and…