Entrepreneurs have been linked to economic growth since, like, forever. Politicians? Not so much
AEIdeas
So researchers Olivier Gergaud, Morgane Laouénan, and Étienne Wasmer have created a database of 1.2 million people from 2,000 cities since 800 AD using an “in depth analysis” of Wikipedia biographies. The goal to identify individuals’ impact on growth. Here is their big finding (which supports my biases):
Last and not least, we find a positive correlation between the contemporaneous number of entrepreneurs and the urban growth of the city in which they are located the following decades. More strikingly, the same is also true for artists, with the contemporaneous number or share of artists positively affecting city growth over the next decades. In contrast, we find a zero or negative correlation between the contemporaneous share of “militaries, politicians and religious people” and urban growth in the following decades.
A US flag flies over the skyline of lower Manhattan. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson.
This is also interesting:
The top ten visible people born before 1890 are all non-Americans and of ten different nationalities. In contrast, six out of the top ten visible people born after 1890 are US-born citizens. From 1800, the share of people from Europe and the US in the database declines, while the number of people from Asia and the Southern Hemisphere grows to reach 20% of the database in 2000.
And some fun tables:
My clickbait headline would have been: “What Jesus and Barack Obama have in common.” Now I notice that some of the above notables were born before 800 AD, but maybe they were so notable it would have been weird to leave them off the list.
Interesting that those listed in the tables had very little to do with the great transformation of the world. The inventors and entrepreneurs seem to go unnoticed. Same as always those who add value to the world are passed over for those who add flash.
‘For example : The question being propounded, What is the value of the combined services to man of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli, as compared with those of Sir Henry Bessemer? Ninety-nine out of a hundred men of sound judgment would doubtless say, ” The value of the services of the two statesmen is quite unimportant, while the value of the services of Mr. Bessemer is enormous, incalculable.” But how many of these ninety-nine men of sound judgment could resist the fascination of the applause accorded to the statesmen? How many of them would have the moral courage to educate their sons for the career of Mr. Bessemer instead of for the career of Mr. Disraeli or of Mr. Gladstone?* Not many in the present state of public sentiment. It will be a great day for man, the day that ushers in the dawn of more sober views of life, the day that inaugurates the era of the mastership of things in the place of the mastership of words. ”
—Charles H. Ham, Mind and Hand: manual training, the chief factor in education (1900)