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

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Chanda, Areendam; Cook, C. Justin; Putterman, Louis
• 署名单位: Louisiana State University System; Louisiana State University; University of California System; University of California Merced; University of Wisconsin System; University of Wisconsin Madison; Brown University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MACROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7707
• DOI: 10.1257/mac.6.3.1
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 1-28
• 关键词: institutions; geography; biogeography; endowments; IMPACT

摘要

Using data on place of origin of today's country populations and the indicators of level of development in 1500 used by Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2002), we confirm a reversal of fortune for colonized countries as territories, but find persistence of fortune for people and their descendants. Persistence results are at least as strong for three alternative measures of early development, for which reversal for territories, however, fails to hold. Additional exercises lend support to Glaeser et al.'s (2004) view that human capital is a more fundamental channel of influence of precolonial conditions on modern development than is quality of institutions. (JEL J11, J24, N10, N30, O15, O43, R11)