What is driving economic growth? What is the nature and causes of the wealth of nations? Why some nations moved from poverty to prosperity while others, on the contrary, fell into miserable poverty? These are all perennial questions for scholars. How economic development is interlinked with institutions, culture, religion and history – these issues are discussed by Ian Melkumov, a GURU author, with Jean-Philippe Platteau, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Namur, Belgium, and Shlomo Weber, President and Professor of Economics, New Economic School in Moscow, and Professor of Economics, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. How culture and economy can move together or get stuck together, how crises are testing the strength of institutions, how populists are using traditional values to grab power, how the Golden Horde rule over Russia affected its development and what are the roots of Russian resentment against the West – these are just a few points of their conversation. >>>