The Size of Nations [Paperback]

Alberto Alesina (Author), Enrico Spolaore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 14, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0262511878 | ISBN-13: 978-0262511872

The authors of this timely and provocative book use the tools of economic analysis to examine the formation and change of political borders. They argue that while these issues have always been at the core of historical analysis, international economists have tended to regard the size of a country as "exogenous," or no more subject to explanation than the location of a mountain range or the course of a river. Alesina and Spolaore consider a country's borders to be subject to the same analysis as any other man-made institution. In The Size of Nations, they argue that the optimal size of a country is determined by a cost-benefit trade-off between the benefits of size and the costs of heterogeneity. In a large country, per capita costs may be low, but the heterogeneous preferences of a large population make it hard to deliver services and formulate policy. Smaller countries may find it easier to respond to citizen preferences in a democratic way.Alesina and Spolaore substantiate their analysis with simple analytical models that show how the patterns of globalization, international conflict, and democratization of the last two hundred years can explain patterns of state formation. Their aim is not only "normative" but also "positive" -- that is, not only to compute the optimal size of a state in theory but also to explain the phenomenon of country size in reality. They argue that the complexity of real world conditions does not preclude a systematic analysis, and that such an analysis, synthesizing economics, political science, and history, can help us understand real world events.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In this superb and pathbreaking monograph, Alesina and Spolaore convincingly apply the tools of economics to show how economic and political forces influence the breakup and integration of nations in an evolving world. This is a new domain of analysis that will be of utmost importance in the twenty-first century."--Gérard Roland, Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley

" The Size of Nations exemplifies the best of political economy. It makes simple but incisive arguments about a large, complex, and multifaceted set of phenomena, and then tests these arguments using the best available techniques. The result is a breathtaking combination of analytic acuity and real world importance. The claim that the confluence of globalization, democratization, and the end of the cold war was the perfect incubator for the explosion of nation states in the 1990s is arrestingly powerful. The Size of Nations will long be admired and studied in the social sciences; it will also stimulate considerable debate and further research on its fascinating subject matter." Geoffrey Garrett, Vice Provost of the International Institute and Professor of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles

"This book is a tour de force..." Leonard Dudley EH.NET

"This intriguing study by two political economists seeks to discover an economic logic behind the size of nations." Foreign Affairs

"This is an extraordinary book that provides a rigorous, fun, and highly original view of what determines the number and size of countries. A must-read for all scholars in the fields of public economics, international economics and international relations" Jaume Ventura, CREI and Universitat Pompeu Fabra

"This is an extraordinary book that provides a rigourous, fun, and highly original view of what determines the number and size of countries. A must-read for all scholars in the fields of public economics, international economics and international relations"--Jaume Ventura, CREI and Universitat Pompeu Fabra

"*The Size of Nations* exemplifies the best of political economy. It makes simple but incisive arguments about a large, complex and multifaceted set of phenomena, and then tests these arguments using the best available techniques. The result is a breathtaking combination of analytic acuity and real world importance. The claim that the confluence of globalization, democratization and the end of the cold war was the perfect incubator for the explosion of nation states in the 1990s is arrestingly powerful. The Size of Nations will long be admired and studied in the social sciences; it will also stimulate considerable debate and further research on its fascinating subject matter."--Geoffrey Garrett, Vice Provost of the International Institute and Professor of Political Science, University of California, Los AngelesPlease note: Endorser gives permission to excerpt from quote in promotional pieces, but it should remain intact on the book jacket.

About the Author

Alberto Alesina is Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economics at Harvard University. He is the coauthor (with Enrico Spolaore) of The Size of Nations (MIT Press, 2003).

Enrico Spolaore is is Professor of Economics at Tufts University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (January 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262511878
• ISBN-13: 978-0262511872
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,722,722 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars very stimulating book February 8, 2004

By Andrew M. Vives

Format:Hardcover

This is an original and stimulating book. The authors's main point is that the size of nations is determined by a trade-off between the costs and benefits of size. Among the costs of large countries there is the difficulty of satisfying the preferences of a more diverse population. However, as they point out, some of these preferences can be accommodated through decentralization and federalism. That is the case in the US. I think that the reviewer below here who mentions Washington and Hawaii is not right. Public amenities are as good in Hawaii as in Washington these days because most public goods are chosen locally in the US (if you go to France things are still pretty different). But the real costs of joining the US for the Hawaians was loss of political independence. The original Hawaians had a very distinct language, culture, etc. and they would have chosen very different policies if they had been independent rather than a part of the US. And that, I understand, is the authors' main point: by expanding a country, you may end up with many people who have preferences that are far from the average preferences. That is a very good and general point, although the authors may have overstressed the link geography-preferences in order to get neat mathematical models, as economists always do. My overall impression from reading this fascinating book is that their story holds pretty well and explains a lot of what actually happened - and is still happening - in the real world.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Stimulating, but centrally flawed. February 2, 2004

By Marlin

Format:Hardcover

The book raises two interesting questions and attempts to answer them; What determines the size of nations, and what effect country size has on economic success? The discussions that follow are thought provoking and I recommend the book to anyone that finds the questions fascinating.
The central flaw is one that comes up early and has far too much influence in subsequent chapters. A principle assumption is that public services are localized and that the further the distance from the those services, the less benefit a citizen will derive from them. Distance therefore becomes a key factor in determining the populations loyalty to the center. Providing those services, or compensating for the lack of them, is progressively more expensive the further from the center. This may have once been true in earlier, more centralized times when capital cities were lavished with amenities that other cities lacked. The same argument now would imply one of the following:

1) that people living in Washington DC have far better public utilities than those living in Honolulu and the central government gives substantial tax breaks to those living in Hawaii to compensate.

or 2) Honolulu has public amenities comparable to DC, but that the cost to the center to provide it to Hawaii is prohibitive and far outweighs taxes collected in Hawaii.

This book is far more valuable for raising the right questions than for giving the right answers. If the reader can appreciate that, this book is well worth the read.

1.0 out of 5 stars A great disappointment April 8, 2013

By Giles Conway-Gordon

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book is a great disappointment .
The subject - the size of nations - has not received any significant attention from academia or elsewhere yet it is potentially of great interest and even of great importance, politically, economically and socially.
Are there any identifiable general factors limiting or encouraging, in one way or another, the size of nation states, considered both in the abstract and in the case of existing individual nations ? The range of possible factors is of course very wide: history, geography (global position, neighbours, climate), physical resources or lack thereof, ethnic, social and linguistic make-up, political regime and political history etc.
However the possible rewards of an imaginative and rigorous study of these factors seem likely to be very immense and illuminating. Are Russia and China for example condemned necessarily to centralised despotism by virtue simply of their physical size ? Are small nations like Benin and Haiti condemned to permanent poverty ? Is it possible to define a minimum physical endowment (or for example fortunate location like Singapore or Panama) for a nation to avoid permanent poverty ?
Instead of opening their imaginations to these possibilities the authors have consciously limited the scope of their analysis to the single factor of economics and have done so, as far as one can see, simply because this allows them to apply reductive and simplifying quantitative analysis to readily-available data.
A massive and regrettable missed opportunity
Giles Conway-Gordon