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This occasional feature will discuss episodes and events drawn from economic history that have lessons for current topics in policy and research. Responses to this column and suggestions for future columns should be sent to Kenneth Sokoloff,

We would like to express deep appreciation for the help of our research assistants Elisa Mariscal, Patricia Juarez, and Leah Brooks. We have also benefited from discussions with Stephen Haber, Daron Acemoglu, George Alter, Sam Bowles, Roberto Cortés Conde, Lance Davis, Gerardo della Paolera, David Dollar, William Easterly, David Eltis, Jeff Frieden, the late Robert Gallman, Claudia Goldin, Aurora Gomez, Avner Greif, Karla Hoff, Lawrence Katz, Daniel Kaufmann, Zorina Khan, Naomi Lamoreaux, Margaret Levenstein, Ross Levine, Frank Lewis, Peter Lindert, Nora Lustig, Douglass North, James Robinson, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Elyce Rotella, Jon Skinner, Joel Slemrod, Federico Sturzenegger, William Summerhill, Alan Taylor, Peter Temin, Mariano Tommasi, Dan Treisman, Miguel Urquiola, John Wallis, Jeffrey Williamson, Gavin Wright, and participants in presentations at Harvard, McGill, Stanford, Yale, Michigan, Indiana, Dartmouth, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, Washington University, the Santa Fe Institute, the NEUDC, and the meeting of the Economia panel held in Cambridge, May 2002. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support we have received from the National Science Foundation, as well as from the Academic Senate and International Studies and Overseas Programs at the University of California, Los Angeles. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Bureau of Economic Research.© 2002 by Stanley L. Engerman and Kenneth L. Sokoloff. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. ABSTRACTWhereas traditional explanations of differences in long-run paths of development across the Americas generally point to the significance of differences in national heritage or religion, we highlight the relevance of stark contrasts in the degree of inequality in wealth, human capital, and political power in accounting for how fundamental economic institutions evolved over time.We argue, moreover, that the roots of these disparities in the extent of inequality lay in differences in the initial factor endowments (dating back to the era of European colonization).We document --through comparative studies of suffrage, public land, and schooling policies --systematic patterns by which societies in the Americas that began with more extreme inequality or heterogeneity in the population were more likely to develop institutional structures that greatly advantaged members of elite classes (and disadvantaging the bulk of the population) by providing them with more political influence and access to economic opportunities. The clear implication is that institutions should not be presumed to be exogenous; economists need to learn more about where they come from to understand their relation to economic development. Our findings not only contribute to our knowledge of why extreme differences in the extent of inequality across New World economies have persisted for centuries, ...

We would like to express deep appreciation for the help of our research assistants Elisa Mariscal, Patricia Juarez, and Leah Brooks. We have also benefited from discussions with Stephen Haber, Daron Acemoglu, George ABSTRACTWhereas traditional explanations of differences in long-run paths of development across the Americas generally point to the significance of differences in national heritage or religion, we highlight the relevance of stark contrasts in the degree of inequality in wealth, human capital, and political power in accounting for how fundamental economic institutions evolved over time.We argue, moreover, that the roots of these disparities in the extent of inequality lay in differences in the initial factor endowments (dating back to the era of European colonization).We document --through comparative studies of suffrage, public land, and schooling policies --systematic patterns by which societies in the Americas that began with more extreme inequality or heterogeneity in the population were more likely to develop institutional structures that greatly advantaged members of elite classes (and disadvantaging the bulk of the population) by providing them with more political influence and access to economic opportunities. The clear implication is that institutions should not be presumed to be exogenous; economists need to learn more about where they come from to understand their relation to economic development. Our findings not only contribute to our knowledge of why extreme differences in the extent of inequality across New World economies have persisted for centuries, but also to the study of processes of long-run economic growth past and present.

Most analysis of how the distribution of political power affects the patterns of growth has been confined to the late-twentieth century. One problem associated with a focus on the modern record is that processes that take place over the long run are not examined. We may all agree that institutions concerned with the distribution of political power have an impact on growth, but our interpretation of the relationship will vary with our understanding of where institutions come from: to what degree are institutions exogenous, and to what degree are they endogenous. This paper contributes to our knowledge of where institutions have come from by examining how the rules governing the extension of suffrage, a key measure of the distribution of political influence, evolved over time within the United States and across the societies of the Americas.We have previously argued that there was enormous variation in the initial extent of inequality across the New World colonial societies established by the Europeans because of differences in their factor endowments present early in their histories. Moreover, these initial differences in inequality may have persisted over time if they affected the ability of elites to obtain disproportionate political leverage, and to shape legal frameworks and state policies to advantage themselves relative to others in terms of access to economic and other opportunities. In this paper, we show that the early patterns of the extension of the franchise, the proportions of the respective populations voting, and other aspects of the conduct of elections are indeed generally consistent with the notion that the extent of initial inequality and population heterogeneity was associated across societies --even within the United States --with the nature of the political institutions that evolved. Specifically, where there was greater inequality, the proportion of the population that had the right to vote was generally lower, and the timing of the extensions of this right from elite groups to a broad population generally later, than in areas where there was relative homogeneity in the population. elite to a broad spectrum of the population might, for example, be expected to lead to greater investment in infrastructure and other public goods and services conducive to growth (such as schooling), a reduction in levels of corruption, a wider participation of the population in commercial activity and economic matters generally, and perhaps more competition throughout the economy. 4 Why a political elite chooses to concede more formal influence to other groups, and whether the conditions that encourage it to do so are related to the potential impact of the change on long-term development, are also key issues.Most of the systematic analysis of how the distribution of political power affects the patterns of growth has been confined to experience over the late-twentieth century. 5This work has made important contributions to our knowledge, but the lack of comparable data has hampered investigation of earl...

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