I now turn to two fundamental questions of societal, political, and economic change. First, what determines the divergent patterns of evolution of societies, polities, or economies over time? And how do we account for the survival of economies with persistently poor performance over long periods of time?

If we look back far enough in history, divergence appears to be very simple to explain. Bands and tribes confronted different problems with different resource endowments, different human capabilities, and in different climates. Out of these emerged different solutions to the common problems of survival, including different languages, customs, traditions, and taboos. There is no reason to believe that solutions should be similar, although there is reason to believe that they would tend to converge over time as the cost of information fell. However, after ten thousand years of civilization, despite the immense decline in information costs and despite the implications of neoclassical international trade models that would suggest convergence, there is enormous contrast between economies.

Which brings me to the second issue. What accounts for the survival of societies and economies that are characterized by persistent poor performance? Since Charles Darwin, evolutionary theory has had a powerful influence upon our understanding of social survival, and it has been embedded in the literature of economics since the publication of Armen Alchian's 1950 article.