Time Machine
The European Origins of Economic Development
William Easterly & Ross Levine
NBER Working Paper, June 2012
Abstract:
A large literature suggests that European settlement outside of Europe shaped institutional, educational, technological, cultural, and economic outcomes. This literature has had a serious gap: no direct measure of colonial European settlement. In this paper, we (1) construct a new database on the European share of the population during the early stages of colonization and (2) examine its impact on the level of economic development today. We find a remarkably strong impact of colonial European settlement on development. According to one illustrative exercise, 47 percent of average global development levels today are attributable to Europeans. One of our most surprising findings is the positive effect of even a small minority European population during the colonial period on per capita income today, contradicting traditional and recent views. There is some evidence for an institutional channel, but our findings are most consistent with human capital playing a central role in the way that colonial European settlement affects development today.
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Geographic axes and the persistence of cultural diversity
David Laitin, Joachim Moortgat & Amanda Lea Robinson
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 26 June 2012, Pages 10263-10268
Abstract:
Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel [Diamond J, (1997) Guns, Germs, and Steel (WW Norton, NY)] has provided a scientific foundation for answering basic questions, such as why Eurasians colonized the global South and not the other way around, and why there is so much variance in economic development across the globe. Diamond's explanatory variables are: (i) the susceptibility of local wild plants to be developed for self-sufficient agriculture; (ii) the domesticability of large wild animals for food, transport, and agricultural production; and (iii) the relative lengths of the axes of continents with implications for the spread of human populations and technologies. This third "continental axis" thesis is the most difficult of Diamond's several explanatory factors to test, given that the number of continents are too few for statistical analysis. This article provides a test of one observable implication of this thesis, namely that linguistic diversity should be more persistent to the degree that a geographic area is oriented more north-south than east-west. Using both modern states and artificial geographic entities as the units of analysis, the results provide significant confirmation of the relationship between geographic orientation and cultural homogenization. Beyond providing empirical support for one observable implication of the continental axis theory, these results have important implications for understanding the roots of cultural diversity, which is an important determinant of economic growth, public goods provision, local violence, and social trust.
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The origins of dragon-kings and their occurrence in society
Artemy Malkov, Julia Zinkina & Andrey Korotayev
Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, forthcoming
Abstract:
Society is a medium with a complex structure of one-to-one relations between people. Those could be relations between friends, wife-husband relationships, relations between business partners, and so on. At a certain level of analysis, society can be regarded as a gigantic maze constituted of one-to-one relationships between people. From a physical standpoint it can be considered as a highly porous medium. Such media are widely known for their outstanding properties and effects like self-organized criticality, percolation, power-law distribution of network cluster sizes, etc. In these media large events, referred to as Dragon-Kings, may occur in two cases: when increasing stress is applied to a system (self-organized criticality scenario) or when increasing conductivity of a system is observed (percolation scenario). In social applications the first scenario is typical for negative effects: crises, wars, revolutions, financial breakdowns, state collapses, etc. Second scenario is more typical for positive effects like emergence of cities, growth of firms, population blow-ups, economic miracles, technology diffusion, social network formation, etc. If both conditions (increasing stress and increasing conductivity) are observed together, then absolutely miraculous Dragon-King effects can occur that involve most human society. Historical examples of this effect are the emergence of the Mongol Empire, world religions, World War II, and the explosive proliferation of global internet services. This article describes these two scenarios in detail beginning with an overview of historical Dragon-King events and phenomena starting from the early human history till the last decades and concluding with an analysis of their possible near future consequences on our global society. Thus we demonstrate that in social systems dragon-king is not a random outlier unexplainable by power-law statistics, but a natural effect. It is a very large cluster in a porous percolation medium. It occurs as a result of changes in external conditions, such as supercritical load, increase in system elements' sensitivity, or system connectivity growth.
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Lisa Blaydes & Eric Chaney
Stanford Working Paper, November 2011
Abstract:
This paper documents a divergence in the duration of rule for monarchs in Western Europe and the Islamic world beginning in the medieval period. While leadership tenures in the two regions were similar in 700 CE, Christian kings became increasingly long-lived compared to Muslim sultans. To better understand the roots of this divergence, we investigate the empirical relevance of an historical literature stressing Carolingian feudalism as critical for the emergence of European institutional exceptionalism. We argue that forms of executive constraint that emerged under feudal institutions were associated with increased political stability and find empirical support for this argument. While feudal institutions served as the basis for military recruitment by European monarchs, Muslim sultans relied on mamlukism - or the use of military slaves imported from non-Muslim lands. Dependence on mamluk armies limited the bargaining strength of local notables vis-`a-vis the sultan, hindering the development of a productively adversarial relationship between ruler and local elites. We argue that Muslim societies' reliance on mamluks, rather than local elites, as the basis for military leadership, may explain why the Glorious Revolution occurred in England, not Egypt.
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Susanne Shultz, Emma Nelson & Robin Dunbar
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 5 August 2012, Pages 2130-2140
Abstract:
As only limited insight into behaviour is available from the archaeological record, much of our understanding of historical changes in human cognition is restricted to identifying changes in brain size and architecture. Using both absolute and residual brain size estimates, we show that hominin brain evolution was likely to be the result of a mix of processes; punctuated changes at approximately 100 kya, 1 Mya and 1.8 Mya are supplemented by gradual within-lineage changes in Homo erectus and Homo sapiens sensu lato. While brain size increase in Homo in Africa is a gradual process, migration of hominins into Eurasia is associated with step changes at approximately 400 kya and approximately 100 kya. We then demonstrate that periods of rapid change in hominin brain size are not temporally associated with changes in environmental unpredictability or with long-term palaeoclimate trends. Thus, we argue that commonly used global sea level or Indian Ocean dust palaeoclimate records provide little evidence for either the variability selection or aridity hypotheses explaining changes in hominin brain size. Brain size change at approximately 100 kya is coincident with demographic change and the appearance of fully modern language. However, gaps remain in our understanding of the external pressures driving encephalization, which will only be filled by novel applications of the fossil, palaeoclimatic and archaeological records.
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Smallpox and Native American mortality: The 1780s epidemic in the Hudson Bay region
Ann Carlos & Frank Lewis
Explorations in Economic History, July 2012, Pages 277-290
Abstract:
The smallpox epidemic of 1781-82 in the Hudson Bay region is said to have devastated the native population, causing mortality of at least 50 percent. We reassess this claim using a four-pronged approach. First, we total smallpox deaths reported by two fur trading posts that were in the midst of the epidemic. Second, we review case fatality rates in other smallpox outbreaks, and discuss the likely incidence of the disease among Native Americans. Third, we analyse trade during the period of the epidemic. Fourth, we estimate the native population prior to the epidemic based on the carrying capacity of the region. All four approaches lead to a similar conclusion. Mortality from smallpox was likely under 20%, which is much less than has previously been asserted.
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On the Size and Shape of African States
Elliott Green
International Studies Quarterly, June 2012, Pages 229-244
Abstract:
African states are both unusually large and well known for having artificial borders created during the colonial period. While African state size and shape have been previously shown to be correlated with negative development outcomes, no one has heretofore examined the origins of either phenomenon. Here, I show that African state size and shape are not arbitrary but are rather a consequence of Africa's low pre-colonial population density, whereby low-density areas were consolidated into unusually large colonial states with artificial borders. I also show that state size has a strong negative relationship with pre-colonial trade and that trade and population density alone explain the majority of the variation in African state size. Finally, I do not find a relationship between population density and state size or shape among non-African former colonies, thereby emphasizing the distinctiveness of modern African state formation.
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Finding Eldorado: Slavery and Long-run Development in Colombia
Daron Acemoglu, Camilo García-Jimeno & James Robinson
NBER Working Paper, June 2012
Abstract:
Slavery has been a major institution of labor coercion throughout history. Colonial societies used slavery intensively across the Americas, and slavery remained prevalent in most countries after independence from the European powers. We investigate the impact of slavery on long-run development in Colombia. Our identification strategy compares municipalities that had gold mines during the 17th and 18th centuries to neighboring municipalities without gold mines. Gold mining was a major source of demand for slave labor during colonial times, and all colonial gold mines are now depleted. We find that the historical presence of slavery is associated with increased poverty and reduced school enrollment, vaccination coverage and public good provision. We also find that slavery is associated with higher contemporary land inequality.
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Insurgency and Long-Run Development: Lessons from the Mexican Revolution
Melissa Dell
MIT Working Paper, April 2012
Abstract:
This study exploits within-state variation in drought severity to identify how insurgency during the Mexican Revolution, a major early 20th century armed conflict, impacted subsequent government policies and long-run economic development. Using a novel municipal-level dataset on revolutionary insurgency, the study documents that municipalities experiencing severe drought just prior to the Revolution were substantially more likely to have insurgent activity than municipalities where drought was less severe. Many insurgents demanded land reform, and following the Revolution, Mexico redistributed over half of its surface area in the form of ejidos: farms comprised of individual and communal plots that were granted to a group of petitioners. Rights to ejido plots were non-transferrable, hiring labor and renting plots were prohibited, and many decisions about the use of ejido lands had to be countersigned by politicians. Instrumental variables estimates show that municipalities with revolutionary insurgency had 22 percentage points more of their surface area redistributed as ejidos. Today, insurgent municipalities are 20 percentage points more agricultural and 6 percentage points less industrial. Incomes in insurgent municipalities are lower and alternations between political parties for the mayorship have been substantially less common. Other historical droughts of similar magnitude to the pre-revolutionary drought are uncorrelated with long-run development. The contrast between the long-run effects of pre-revolutionary drought and other similar droughts underlines that relatively ordinary events occurring at critical historical junctures can have large long-run effects. Overall, the results support the hypothesis that by placing prohibitive restrictions on market transactions and fostering non-competitive politics, Mexican land reform stymied long-run economic development.
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The shadows of the socialist past: Lack of self-reliance hinders entrepreneurship
Stefan Bauernschuster et al.
European Journal of Political Economy, December 2012, Pages 485-497
Abstract:
We provide empirical evidence that the experience of a socialist regime leads to a lack of self-reliance by comparing East and West Germans conditional on regional differences in current economic development. This meaningful lack of self-reliance persists after the regime's breakdown and hinders the development of an entrepreneurial spirit, which might hamper the transition process. Since East Germany adopted the formal institutions of a market economy quasi overnight when reunifying with West Germany, we avoid simultaneity issues regarding current institutions and preferences. Further tentative evidence suggests that the socialist regime also affected the composition of the East German population by inducing selective migration before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.
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The rise and fall of Spain (1270-1850)
Carlos Álvarez-Nogal & Leandro Prados De La Escosura
Economic History Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two distinctive regimes are distinguished in Spain over half a millennium. The first one (1270s-1590s) corresponds to a high land-labour ratio frontier economy, which is pastoral, trade-oriented, and led by towns. Wages and food consumption were relatively high. Sustained per capita growth occurred from the end of the Reconquest (1264) to the Black Death (1340s) and resumed from the 1390s only broken by late fifteenth-century turmoil. A second regime (1600s-1810s) corresponds to a more agricultural and densely populated low-wage economy which, although it grew at a pace similar to that of 1270-1600, remained at a lower level. Contrary to pre-industrial western Europe, Spain achieved its highest living standards in the 1340s, not by mid-fifteenth century. Although its death toll was lower, the plague had a more damaging impact on Spain and, far from releasing non-existent demographic pressure, destroyed the equilibrium between scarce population and abundant resources. Pre-1350 per capita income was reached by the late sixteenth century but only exceeded after 1820.
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John Craig Hammond
Journal of the Early Republic, Summer 2012, Pages 175-206
Abstract:
This article examines the origins and expansion of "empires for slavery" on the North American continent between the Seven Years War and the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, arguing that historians should rethink the origins, periodization, geography, and dynamics of slavery's growth in the interior of the North American continent through 1815. Slavery was central to British, French, and Spanish efforts to establish territorial hegemony in the interior of the continent in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Consequently, in the forty years between the Seven Years War and the Louisiana Purchase, slavery became one of the central economic, social, and political institutions in the imperial Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi Valleys. By the time of the Louisiana Purchase, these regions were joined in a distinct Mississippi Valley plantation complex that was itself part of a broader Atlantic world of empires, commerce, and slavery. Like its imperial rivals and predecessors, the United States used state support for slavery as a means to secure sovereignty. Furthermore, under American rule, the continuities that characterized slavery and its growth were more significant than the changes wrought by the extension of American sovereignty into the interior of the North American continent. In sum, this article argues that in the interior of the North American continent, the growth of slavery under American rule represented not a sharp break from the past but a significant continuity that stretched back to the 1760s and connected the region's colonial past to its place in the post-1815 American Union.
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America and the Garrison Stadium: How the US Armed Forces Shaped College Football
Joseph Paul Vasquez
Armed Forces & Society, July 2012, Pages 353-372
Abstract:
American military institutions importantly shaped the popular sport of college football. From support at its two oldest service academies, interest in football spread through military units across the country with military actors involved in the formation of the country's first collegiate athletic conference and the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Subsequently, the US military functioned as an agent of authoritative diffusion, fostering interest in college football after the First World War. Furthermore, military institutions, including the draft, affected not only which team would be most successful during the Second World War but also how civilians would play the game. These effects call to mind Charles Tilly's work on state formation and security-driven resource extraction as well as Harold Lasswell's garrison state idea.
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Dialects, Cultural Identity, and Economic Exchange
Oliver Falck et al.
Journal of Urban Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the effect of cultural ties on economic exchange using a novel measure for cultural identity: dialects. We evaluate linguistic micro-data from a unique language survey conducted between 1879 and 1888 in about 45,000 German schools. The recorded geography of dialects comprehensively portrays local cultural similarities that have been evolving for centuries, and provides an ideal opportunity to measure cultural barriers to economic exchange at a fine geographical scale. In a gravity analysis we show that cross-regional migration flows in the period 2000-2006 are positively affected by historical dialect similarity. Using different empirical strategies, we show that this finding indicates highly time-persistent cultural ties that foster economic exchange across regions.
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Urbanization as a Global Historical Process: Theory and Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa
Sean Fox
Population and Development Review, June 2012, Pages 285-310
Abstract:
Urbanization has traditionally been understood as a byproduct of economic development, but this explanatory framework fails to account for the phenomenon of "urbanization without growth" observed in sub-Saharan Africa throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In light of this apparent anomaly, I argue that urbanization is better understood as a global historical process driven by population dynamics associated with technological and institutional innovations that have substantially improved disease control and food security in urban settlements across the globe. These innovations first emerged in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and were subsequently diffused through colonialism, trade, and international development assistance. A range of qualitative and quantitative evidence is presented to demonstrate that this historically grounded theory of urbanization offers a more convincing explanation for the stylized facts of Africa's urban transition - and hence the process of world urbanization more broadly - than the traditional economic account.
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Katja Hanke et al.
International Journal of Intercultural Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
The study investigates intergroup forgiveness and its antecedents in the context of post World War II in Asia and Europe. An integrative social psychological and social representation of history and identity theoretical framework was used in which it is proposed that the societal context influences intergroup forgiveness of formerly victimized societies. Data was collected from 1197 university students from mainland China, Taiwan, the Philippines, France, Russia and Poland. ANOVAs show significant differences across societies. Mainland Chinese participants were less forgiving than all other participants. We examined two new variables contributing to explain variations in intergroup forgiveness: historical closure and perceived costs of granting forgiveness. Multiple hierarchical regressions and cross-level operator analyses showed that historical and political contexts are significant contributors in the intergroup forgiveness process. The importance of accounting for and the necessity to extend the scope of research regarding the political and historical context in which formerly victimized societies are embedded is highlighted.
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Knick Harley
Explorations in Economic History, forthcoming
Abstract:
Price and profit data between the 1770s and the 1820s from accounting records of three Lancashire cotton firms help to illumine the nature of the economic processes at work in early industrialization. Many historians have seen the Industrial Revolution as a Schumpeterian process in which discontinuous technological change led by the mechanized factories of the cotton industry created large profits for innovators that persisted in succeeding decades while technology slowly diffused. In this view imperfect capital markets limited the use of the new technology, keeping profits high. Reinvestment of these profits gradually financed expansion of innovating firms. The new technology dominated only after a long diffusion process. The evidence here, however, supports a more equilibrium view in which the industry expanded rapidly and prices fell in response to technological change. Expansion of the industry led to dramatic declines in the prices of cotton goods as early as the 1780s. There is no evidence of super-normal profits thereafter. Prices continued to fall and output expand thereafter as cost-reducing technological change continued.
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A small cohort of Island Southeast Asian women founded Madagascar
Murray Cox et al.
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 22 July 2012, Pages 2761-2768
Abstract:
The settlement of Madagascar is one of the most unusual, and least understood, episodes in human prehistory. Madagascar was one of the last landmasses to be reached by people, and despite the island's location just off the east coast of Africa, evidence from genetics, language and culture all attests that it was settled jointly by Africans, and more surprisingly, Indonesians. Nevertheless, extremely little is known about the settlement process itself. Here, we report broad geographical screening of Malagasy and Indonesian genetic variation, from which we infer a statistically robust coalescent model of the island's initial settlement. Maximum-likelihood estimates favour a scenario in which Madagascar was settled approximately 1200 years ago by a very small group of women (approx. 30), most of Indonesian descent (approx. 93%). This highly restricted founding population raises the possibility that Madagascar was settled not as a large-scale planned colonization event from Indonesia, but rather through a small, perhaps even unintended, transoceanic crossing.
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First wave of cultivators spread to Cyprus at least 10,600 y ago
Jean-Denis Vigne et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 29 May 2012, Pages 8445-8449
Abstract:
Early Neolithic sedentary villagers started cultivating wild cereals in the Near East 11,500 y ago [Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA)]. Recent discoveries indicated that Cyprus was frequented by Late PPNA people, but the earliest evidence until now for both the use of cereals and Neolithic villages on the island dates to 10,400 y ago. Here we present the recent archaeological excavation at Klimonas, which demonstrates that established villagers were living on Cyprus between 11,100 and 10,600 y ago. Villagers had stone artifacts and buildings (including a remarkable 10-m diameter communal building) that were similar to those found on Late PPNA sites on the mainland. Cereals were introduced from the Levant, and meat was obtained by hunting the only ungulate living on the island, a small indigenous Cypriot wild boar. Cats and small domestic dogs were brought from the mainland. This colonization suggests well-developed maritime capabilities by the PPNA period, but also that migration from the mainland may have occurred shortly after the beginning of agriculture.