Niall Ferguson says there are right and wrong answers to the question 'why has the West been so successful?' He believes the degrading of institutions in the West should be of concern and that the most recent data from the OECD shows Asian countries surging ahead when it comes to things like education.

In this clip, Niall talks about...

The wrong answers to the question of why the West has succeeded
"The wrong answer is racial superiority -- that's clearly the wrong answer. The wrong answer is geography, that doesn't really work. It's not the weather either. And it's not religion because after all Europe had Christianity for about a thousand years without much happening."

Whether the Western way of life is played out
"I think there's a danger that it's entering a period of crisis, and I think we need to be much more self-critical about what has gone wrong in our societies. Certainly the inequality that has become such a focus of Occupy Wall Street is a symptom of something that has gone wrong in terms of diminishing social mobility."