True, even if there have been mistakes, it is surely the case that the Irish policy response has been less ideologically contaminated than that of the 1840s. But, as with many other  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  episodes of economic downturn, international policy activism was stayed, not only by the constraints of infeasibility, but by censoriously excessive concerns about moral hazard.
I also remember reading his considerations on the minor role of railroads in the Italian post unity decades and their factual importance for growth in the United States (helping to properly interpret Fogel’s “provocative”, as he defined it, major contribution). Indeed his insufficiently quoted 1973 paper on the methodology of counterfactual analysis in the Journal of European Economic History is a true masterpiece.