The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth

"The Spirit of Capitalism" answers a fundamental question of economics: what are the reasons (rather than just the conditions) for sustained economic growth? Liah Greenfeld focuses on the problem of motivation behind the epochal change in behavior, which from the sixteenth century on has reoriented one economy after another from subsistence to profit, transforming the nature of economic activity. A detailed analysis of the development of economic consciousness in England, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States allows her to argue that the motivation behind the modern, growth-oriented economy was nationalism.