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

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Angeles, Luis; Elizalde, Aldo
• 署名单位: University of Glasgow
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2016.08.006
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 22-40
• 关键词: Latin America; institutions; Pre-colonial factors; Amerindians; Long-run development

摘要

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 characteristics - plus country fixed effects. Results strongly support our thesis. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.