Was the Wealth of Nations Determined in 1000 B.C.?

Comín, Diego; Easterly, William; Gong, Erick

doi:10.3386/w12657

Cited by 29 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Relatedly, Chanda and Putterman (2007) demonstrate empirically that state antiquity is also partly associated with the undoing in recent years of the "reversal of fortunes" phenomenon from the era of European colonization. Moreover, consistent with Diamond's (1997) hypothesis, Comin et al (2006) have recently uncovered evidence identifying historical technology adoption as a significant determinant of contemporary development outcomes.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 68%

Human Genetic Diversity and Comparative Economic Development

Ashraf

Galor

2008

SSRN Journal

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractThis research contributes to the understanding of human genetic diversity within a society as a significant determinant of its economic development. The hypothesis advanced and empirically examined in this paper suggests that there are socioeconomic trade-offs associated with genetic diversity within a given society. The investigation exploits an exogenous source of cross-country variation in genetic diversity by appealing to the "out of Africa" hypothesis of human origins to empirically establish a highly statistically significant and robust non-monotonic effect of genetic diversity on development outcomes in the pre-colonial era. Contrary to theories that reject a possible role for human genetics in influencing economic development, this study demonstrates the economic significance of diversity in genetic traits, while abstaining entirely from conceptual frameworks that posit a hierarchy of such traits in terms of their conduciveness to the process of economic development.

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Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 68%

Human Genetic Diversity and Comparative Economic Development

Ashraf

Galor

2008

SSRN Journal

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“…The first dataset, from Comin, Easterly and Gong (2010), (henceforth CEG) describes the level of technology 13 Using instead the genetic distance between genetic groups constituting a plurality of the populations of each country did not materially affect the results. The two measures only differ for pairs involving countries made up of more than one genetic group, so in practice the two measures are highly correlated.…”

Section: Technological Adoptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We focus on the 1990-1999 time period, and among the over 100 technologies we retain those for which at least 50 countries are available, to ensure sufficient sample size and variability. We average the the usage data over the 1990-1999 period, and divide each measure by the country's population, following Comin, Easterly and Gong (2010). 15 The resulting set of 33 technologies we explored from the CHAT dataset are listed in Appendix 1 -they cover a wide range of technological categories such as agricultural technologies, transportation technologies, communications technologies, medical technologies, and industrial technologies.…”

Section: Technological Adoptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To do so, we use historical and contemporary data on usage rates of a wide range of technologies, dating back to the year 1500. We use two recently developed databases of technology adoption: The Cross-Country Historical Adoption of Technology (CHAT) dataset, which covers a wide range of detailed technologies going back to the year 1800 (Comin and Hobijn, 2009), and the database of historical technology adoption used in Comin, Easterly and Gong (2010) to study technological persistence since antiquity (this database goes back to 1000 BC, but we only make use of data since 1500 AD). We compare the empirical effects of the bilateral genetic distance between populations to that of genetic distance relative to the technological frontier, finding that the latter trumps the former as a determinant of bilateral differences in technological adoption rates.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Long-Term Barriers to the International Diffusion of Innovations

Spolaore¹,

Wacziarg²

2011

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We document an empirical relationship between the cross-country adoption of technologies and the degree of long-term historical relatedness between human populations. Historical relatedness is measured using genetic distance, a measure of the time since two populations' last common ancestors. We find that the measure of human relatedness that is relevant to explain international technology diffusion is genetic distance relative to the world technological frontier ("relative frontier distance"). This evidence is consistent with long-term historical relatedness acting as a barrier to technology adoption: societies that are more distant from the technological frontier tend to face higher imitation costs. The results can help explain current differences in total factor productivity and income per capita across countries.

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“…The mutual positive interaction between population and technology is a central element of the theory, and may be thought of as a synthesis of Malthusian and Boserupian elements. 11 The Malthusian part -technology stimulates pop- 10 An immediately noteworthy common feature of the aforementioned instances of technological regress is that they all occurred during periods featuring major declines in the size of population. Following the collapse of the Roman Empire population underwent a significant decline (see Livi-Bacci, 1997).…”

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confidence: 99%

Technological progress and regress in pre-industrial times

2008

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This paper offers micro-foundations for the dynamic relationship between technology and population in the pre-industrial world, accounting for both technological progress and the hitherto neglected but common phenomenon of technological regress. A growing population engenders the endogenous adoption of new techniques that increase the division of labor. Conversely, technological progress supports an increasing population in the Malthusian environment. A transient shock to population or productivity, however, induces the neglect of some techniques rendered temporarily unprofitable, which are therefore not transmitted to the next generation. When the shock passes, the division of labor remains constrained by the smaller stock of knowledge, and technology has thereby regressed. A slow process of rediscovery is required for the economy to reach its previous level of technological sophistication and population size.

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Was the Wealth of Nations Determined in 1000 B.C.?

Cited by 29 publications

References 37 publications

Human Genetic Diversity and Comparative Economic Development

Human Genetic Diversity and Comparative Economic Development

Long-Term Barriers to the International Diffusion of Innovations

Technological progress and regress in pre-industrial times

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