Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity

Simon Johnson, Daron Acemoglu
Paperback, 560 pages
9781399804479

Winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize for Economics

A bold new interpretation of why technology benefits the elites - and how we must reshape the path of innovation to create true shared prosperity. A thousand years of history make one thing clear: progress is not automatic but depends on the choices we make. Much of the wealth generated by agricultural advances during the Middle Ages was captured by the Church while the peasants starved.

The first hundred years of industrialization delivered stagnant incomes for workers, while making a few people rich. Throughout the world today, digital technologies and artificial intelligence increase inequality and undermine democracy. It doesn't have to be this way.

Power and Progress demonstrates that the path of technology was once - and can again be - brought under control. With their breakthrough economic theory and manifesto for a better society, Acemoglu and Johnson provide the vision to reshape how we innovate so we can create real prosperity for all.