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Patrick Francois
Patrick Francois is Professor in the Vancouver School of Economics (University of British Columbia) and a Senior Fellow of the Institutions, Organizations and Growth programme of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. His work focusses on problems in development economics, with a particular interest in political economy.
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Economics Nobel 2024: Igniting discussion beyond the academy
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics has been awarded to Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity”. In this post, Patrick Francois contend that the contribution of the laureates lies in opening up a whole new set of facts from history, to change the way we think about one of the biggest of the ‘big questions’ in economics – why are some places rich and others poor?
A tribute to Prof. Ashok Kotwal by Prof. Patrick Francois
Prof. Patrick Francois pens a heartfelt tribute to our founder Editor-in-Chief Prof. Ashok Kotwal.
Culture and development
How did human society evolve from being organised predominantly around large kin-based networks, to one with strong notions of individualism? To examine this question, Joseph Henrich (Harvard University) and Patrick Francois (University of British Columbia) discuss the interactions between informal norms, formal institutions, and psychology, based on examples and evidence from around the world. With the realisation in the West that kin-based societies have limited scalability, and the Church facilitating the breakdown of these units, certain psychological traits emerged and solidified – the central premise of Henrich’s book "The WEIRDest people in the world: How the West became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous". As these societies gained an ascendant position, the new norms and institutions proliferated and affected the rest of the world, via pathways such as Industrial Revolution and exports. Finally, they deliberate on how the possibility of substantial psychologi
Culture and development
How did human society evolve from being organised predominantly around large kin-based networks, to one with strong notions of individualism? To examine this question, Joseph Henrich (Harvard University) and Patrick Francois (University of British Columbia) discuss the interactions between informal norms, formal institutions, and psychology, based on examples and evidence from around the world. With the realisation in the West that kin-based societies have limited scalability, and the Church facilitating the breakdown of these units, certain psychological traits emerged and solidified – the central premise of Henrich’s book "The WEIRDest people in the world: How the West became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous". As these societies gained an ascendant position, the new norms and institutions proliferated and affected the rest of the world, via pathways such as Industrial Revolution and exports. Finally, they deliberate on how the possibility of substantial psychologi