Buried under a head­line that rivals one in yesterday’s NYT for incom­pre­hen­si­bil­ity is an arti­cle by Nicholas Wade that struck me as inter­est­ing for all the wrong reasons.

Wade presents the work of Gre­gory Clark, an econ­o­mist whose research focuses on the changes that occurred in human pop­u­la­tions before, during, and after the Indus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion. Clark’s hypoth­e­sis is that genetic, and not merely cul­tural, changes are ulti­mately respon­si­ble for the increase in pro­duc­tion that allowed Euro­pean soci­eties to escape the so-​called “Malthusian trap.”

Clark’s book isn’t out yet, but Wade’s long arti­cle gives one good rea­sons to sus­pect that Clark’s hypoth­e­sis is at least untestable, if not wrong. (Most of the econ­o­mists quoted in Wade’s arti­cle praise Clark’s data gath­er­ing but are skep­ti­cal of his genetic claims.) But as a new episode in the long flir­ta­tion eco­nom­ics has kept up with biol­ogy, it’s worth paying atten­tion to.