Persistence of Fortune: Accounting for Population Movements, There Was No Post-Columbian Reversal

Chanda, Areendam; Cook, C. Justin; Putterman, Louis

doi:10.1257/mac.6.3.1

Cited by 46 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…This adjustment was motivated by the large movements of populations especially from "Old World" continents to the Americas, Australia and New Zealand after 1500. Chanda et al (2014) apply the same procedure to demonstrate "persistence of fortune" of ancestral lines in former colonies that display a "reversal of fortune" (Acemoglu et al 2002) in the absence of such ancestry and migration accounting. 3 In short, previous work has largely agreed on a positive association between long-run state history and current development.…”

Section: State History and Economic Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

State history and economic development: evidence from six millennia

2017

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The presence of a state is one of the most reliable historical predictors of social and economic development. In this article, we complete the coding of an extant indicator of state presence from 3500 BCE forward for almost all but the smallest countries of the world today. We outline a theoretical framework where accumulated state experience increases aggregate productivity in individual countries but where newer or relatively inexperienced states can reach a higher productivity maximum by learning from the experience of older states. The predicted pattern of comparative development is tested in an empirical analysis where we introduce our extended state history variable. Our key finding is that the current level of economic development across countries has a hump-shaped relationship with accumulated state history. Keywords State historyWe are grateful for useful comments from Carl-Johan Dalgaard, Jakob Gerner Hariri, Sascha Becker and four anonymous referees and from seminar participants at University of Copenhagen and Brown University. We also thank Taewan Roh and Nicholas Carter for valuable research assistance. Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10887-017-9152-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Section: State History and Economic Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

State history and economic development: evidence from six millennia

2017

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“…18 For alternative views on the reversal of fortune hypothesis see Chanda et al (2014) and Maloney and Valencia (forthcoming). We note that, contrary to the rest of the literature, we are testing the reversal of fortune only among Latin American countries.…”

Section: Controlling For Other Pre-colonial Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pre-colonial institutions and socioeconomic development: The case of Latin America

Angeles

Elizalde

2017

Journal of Development Economics

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We study the effects of pre-colonial institutions on present-day socioeconomic outcomes for Latin America. Our thesis is that more advanced pre-colonial institutions relate to better socioeconomic outcomes today. We advance that pre-colonial institutions survived to our days thanks to the existence of largely self-governed Amerindian communities in rural Latin America. Amerindians groups with more advanced institutional capacity would have been able to organize and defend their interests in front of national governments; leading to better development outcomes for themselves and for the population at large. We test our thesis with a dataset of 324 sub-national administrative units covering all mainland Latin American countries. Our extensive range of controls covers factors such as climate, location, natural resources, colonial activities and pre-colonial characteristicsplus country fixed effects. Results strongly support our thesis.

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“…Sources and definitions of all variables are given within the appendix of variables. Ancestry-adjusted measures use the matrix of migration between 1500 and 1960 from Chanda, Cook, and Putterman (2014). OLS coefficients are reported in each column.…”

Section: A Explaining Hla Heterozygositymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Consequently, all historic regressors and controls have been adjusted by migration movements, or "ancestry adjusted." In adjusting populations by migration movements, I use the matrix of migration from 1500 to 1960 (Chanda, Cook, & Putterman, 2014), which is partially derived from the 1500-2000 migration matrix of Putterman and Weil (2010). primary hypothesis of whether this inherent genetic variation can explain differences in health outcomes prior to the international epidemiological transition.…”

Section: A Explaining Hla Heterozygositymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Natural Selection of Infectious Disease Resistance and Its Effect on Contemporary Health

Cook

2015

Review of Economics and Statistics

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This paper empirically tests the association between genetically determined resistance to infectious disease and cross-country health differences. A country-level measure of genetic diversity for the system of genes associated with the recognition and disposal of foreign pathogens is constructed. Genetic diversity within this system has been shown to reduce the virulence and prevalence of infectious diseases and is hypothesized to have been naturally selected from historical exposure to infectious pathogens. Base estimation shows a statistically strong, robust, and positive relationship between this constructed measure and country-level health outcomes in times prior to, but not after, the international epidemiological transition.

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Persistence of Fortune: Accounting for Population Movements, There Was No Post-Columbian Reversal

Cited by 46 publications

References 23 publications

State history and economic development: evidence from six millennia

State history and economic development: evidence from six millennia

Pre-colonial institutions and socioeconomic development: The case of Latin America

The Natural Selection of Infectious Disease Resistance and Its Effect on Contemporary Health

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