Barry Weingast agrees that the idea of liberalism was crucial for the making of the modern world, though in most of his comment he turns to his own writings making institutional change the crux. Yet institutions in Britain did not in fact change much, the changes had little economic oomph, and underlying property rights were good in numerous economies worldwide since ancient times. An ideational economic history works better: liberty caused our riches.
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Deirdre N. McCloskey (2017) studied this question.
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