Acemoglu's thesis demonstrates how political and economic institutions create divergence between societies that share identical geography. In the Korea case study, North and South Korea start at eight hundred fifty dollars per capita in nineteen fifty, but diverge over seventy years. In the explorer, moving the institutional quality slider recalculates simulated output using twelve thousand times one plus forty times quality to the power of one point five. Clicking Counterfactual Replay runs this transition in real time, demonstrating how institutional reforms multiply output over geography alone.