Developing state
State Capacity and American Technology: Evidence from the 19th Century
Daron Acemoglu, Jacob Moscona & James Robinson
NBER Working Paper, January 2016
Abstract:
Robert Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Economic Growth provides a compelling interpretation of how technical change and innovation has radically changed the living standards of the citizens of the US in the past 150 years. Lying behind these changes are the institutions which have allowed the country to harness its human potential. In this paper we conduct an empirical investigation of the impact of one key set of institutions, the capacity of the US state as proxied by the presence of post offices in a county, on innovation. We show that between 1804 and 1899, the time when the US became the world technological leader, there is a strong association between the presence and number of post offices in a county and patenting activity, and it appears that it is the opening of postal offices that leads to surges in patenting activity, not the other way around. Our evidence suggests that part of the yet untold story of US technological exceptionalism is the way in which the US created an immensely capable and effective state.
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Does Governance Cause Growth? Evidence from China
Ross Wilson
World Development, March 2016, Pages 138-151
Abstract:
This study tests the causal relationships between quality of governance and economic growth at the provincial level in China during the post-Mao reform era. Exploiting the wide cross-provincial variation and rapid change over time in governance institutions and economic performance in China during this period (covering 1985-2005), the study provides a new perspective on the relationship between governance and growth. Whereas a large body of prior literature has demonstrated a strong positive association between high-quality governance institutions and good economic performance at the cross-country level, few quantitative studies have explicitly tested the direction of causality between changes in governance quality and changes in economic outcomes. This study aims to address this gap in the literature by testing two causal hypotheses on the interplay between provincial-level governance and economic performance in China: (i) improvements in provincial quality of governance predict subsequent economic growth rates, and (ii) increases in provincial economic growth rates predict subsequent changes in quality of governance. Using new heterogeneous Granger causality tests that allow for potential differences in the causal relations across provinces, I show a significant and positive effect of economic growth on subsequent quality of governance, largely driven by growth in the secondary sector, but no significant effect of quality of governance on economic growth. These findings suggest that improvements in formal governance have not been a key factor driving China's rapid growth; instead, the observed positive association between governance and growth reflects the ability of provincial governments to harness the potential created by economic growth to implement subsequent governance improvements. For researchers studying the effect of governance on growth, the results suggest that greater attention should be paid to possible reverse causality from economic outcomes to governance changes.
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Hard or Easy? Difficulty of Entrepreneurial Startups in 107 Climato-Economic Environments
Evert Van de Vliert, Onne Janssen & Gerben Van der Vegt
Applied Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Driven by existential needs for thermal comfort, nutrition, and health, human populations create cultural adaptations to environmental conditions. Entrepreneurs starting new businesses in more threatening or more challenging environments may be a case in point. In a secondary analysis of population-level data from 107 nations, we cross-sectionally examined six adaptation hypotheses based on climato-economic theorising. The regression results show that new business creation is experienced as being the hardest in the threatening environments of poorer countries with colder winters and cooler summers (e.g. Bolivia and Ukraine), and as being the easiest in the challenging environments of richer countries with hotter summers and warmer winters (e.g. Singapore and United Arab Emirates). Rival explanations in terms of the historical trajectory of state emergence (state antiquity, colonial past, communist past) and societal development (industrialisation, democratisation, education) are ruled out and discussed. This article suggests that results of individual-level and group-level research into entrepreneurship are tentative at best as long as cultural adaptations to climato-economic environments are left out of consideration.
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The Effect of IMF Programs on Women's Economic and Political Rights
Nicole Detraz & Dursun Peksen
International Interactions, forthcoming
Abstract:
Though much research has been devoted to the socioeconomic and political consequences of International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs for recipient countries, little is known about the impacts of these programs on the level of respect for women's rights. We postulate that IMF-induced policy reforms of privatization and public spending cuts, and the growing political repression and instability following the implementation of IMF programs, undermine the government's ability and willingness to protect women's economic and political rights. To substantiate the theoretical claims, we combine data on women's political and economic rights with data on IMF programs for the years 1981-2005. Our findings suggest that IMF involvement is likely to deteriorate the level of respect for women's economic rights while having no discernible effect on women's political rights. The results further indicate that the effect of these programs is not conditioned by political regime type and economic wealth of recipient countries. One major policy implication of our findings is that the IMF should begin to recognize that the conditions attached to lending programs might be implemented at the expense of women's economic rights and that more explicit protections for women's rights need to be included in program negotiations.
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Richard Easterlin
University of Southern California Working Paper, January 2016
Abstract:
Or Paradox Regained? The answer is Paradox Regained. New data confirm that for countries worldwide long-term trends in happiness and real GDP per capita are not significantly positively related. The principal reason that Paradox critics reach a different conclusion, aside from problems of data comparability, is that they do not focus on identifying long-term trends in happiness. For some countries their estimated growth rates of happiness and GDP are not trend rates, but those observed in cyclical expansion or contraction. Mixing these short-term with long-term growth rates shifts a happiness-GDP regression from a horizontal to positive slope.
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The Economic Consequences of Hugo Chavez: A Synthetic Control Analysis
Kevin Grier & Norman Maynard
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
We use the synthetic control method to perform a case study of the impact of Hugo Chavez on the Venezuelan economy. We compare outcomes under Chavez's leadership and polices against a counterfactual of "business as usual" in similar countries. We find that, relative to our control, per capita income fell dramatically. While poverty, health, and inequality outcomes all improved during the Chavez administration, these outcomes also improved in each of the corresponding control cases and thus we cannot attribute the improvements to Chavismo. We conclude that the overall economic consequences of the Chavez administration were bleak.
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The Influence of Ancestral Lifeways on Individual Economic Outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa
Stelios Michalopoulos, Louis Putterman & David Weil
NBER Working Paper, January 2016
Abstract:
We explore the role of an individual's historical lineage in determining economic status, holding constant his or her current location. This is complementary to the more common approach to studying how history shapes economic outcomes across locations. Motivated by a large literature in social sciences stressing the beneficial influence of agricultural transition on contemporary economic performance at the level of countries, we examine the relative status of descendants of agriculturalists vs. pastoralists. We match individual-level survey data with information on the historical lifeways of ancestors, focusing on Africa, where the transition away from such modes of production began only recently. Within enumeration areas and occupational groups, we find that individuals from ethnicities that derived a larger share of subsistence from agriculture in the pre-colonial era are today more educated and wealthy. A tentative exploration of channels suggests that differences in attitudes and beliefs as well as differential treatment by others, including less political power, may contribute to these divergent outcomes.
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Income inequality and violent crime: Evidence from Mexico's drug war
Ted Enamorado et al.
Journal of Development Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The goal of this paper is to examine the effect of inequality on crime rates in a unique context, Mexico's drug war. The analysis exploits an original dataset containing inequality and crime statistics on more than 2000 Mexican municipalities over a 20-year period. To uncover the causal effect of inequality on crime, we use an instrumental variable for the Gini coefficient that combines the initial income distribution at the municipality level with national trends. Our estimates indicate that a one-point increment in the Gini coefficient between 2007 and 2010 translates into an increase of more than 36% in the number of drug-related homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. The fact that the effect found during the drug war is substantially greater is likely caused by the rise in rents to be extracted through crime and an expansion in the employment opportunities in the illegal sector through the proliferation of drug trafficking organizations (DTOs), accompanied by a decline in legal job opportunities and a reduction in the probability of being caught given the resource constraints faced by the law enforcement system. Combined, the latter factors made the expected benefits of criminal activity shift in a socially undesirable direction after 2007.
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The Long Shadows of Spanish and French Colonial Education
Horst Feldmann
Kyklos, February 2016, Pages 32-64
Abstract:
Both Spanish and French colonial education included several features that restricted education. Many of them persisted long after independence. Against this background, this paper econometrically studies whether in the recent past the colonial legacy still affected schooling in the ex-colonies of these two former colonial powers - and, for comparison, in the ex-colonies of Britain, the third of the former big three colonial powers. Using a large sample of countries and numerous controls, it finds substantial negative effects on both secondary enrollment and average years of schooling in former French and, especially, in former Spanish colonies. The negative effects on females are particularly large. By contrast, there are no effects in former British colonies.
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Sovereign Debt Relief and Its Aftermath
Carmen Reinhart & Christoph Trebesch
Journal of the European Economic Association, February 2016, Pages 215-251
Abstract:
This paper studies sovereign debt relief in a long-term perspective. We quantify the relief achieved through default and restructuring in two distinct samples: 1920-1939, focusing on the defaults on official (government to government) debt in advanced economies after World War I; and 1978-2010, focusing on emerging market debt crises with private external creditors. Debt relief was substantial in both eras, averaging 21% of GDP in the 1930s and 16% of GDP in recent decades. We then analyze the aftermath of debt relief and conduct a difference-in-differences analysis around the synchronous war debt defaults of 1934 and the Baker and Brady initiatives of the 1980s/1990s. The economic landscape of debtor countries improves significantly after debt relief operations, but only if these involve debt write-offs. Softer forms of debt relief, such as maturity extensions and interest rate reductions, are not generally followed by higher economic growth or improved credit ratings.
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Roots of the Industrial Revolution
Morgan Kelly, Joel Mokyr & Cormac O'Grada
University College Dublin Working Paper, November 2015
Abstract:
We analyze factors explaining the very different patterns of industrialization across the 42 counties of England between 1760 and 1830. Against the widespread view that high wages and cheap coal drove industrialization, we find that industrialization was restricted to low wage areas, while energy availability (coal or water) had little impact. Instead we find that industrialization can largely be explained by two factors related to the human capability of the labour force. Instead of being composed of landless labourers, successful industrializers had large numbers of small farms, which are associated with better nutrition and height. Secondly, industrializing counties had a high density of population relative to agricultural land, indicating extensive rural industrial activity: counties that were already reliant on small scale industry, with the technical and entrepreneurial skills this generated, experienced the strongest industrial growth. Looking at 1830s France we find that the strongest predictor of industrialization again is quality of workers shown by height of the population, although market access and availability of water power were also important.
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Endogenous Legal Traditions and Economic Outcomes
Carmine Guerriero
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Outcomes are deeply influenced by the set of institutions used to aggregate the citizens' preferences over the harshness of punishment, i.e., the legal tradition. I show that while under common law appellate judges' biases offset one another at the cost of legal uncertainty, under civil law the legislator chooses a certain legal rule that is biased only when he favors special interests, i.e., when preferences are sufficiently heterogeneous and/or political institutions are sufficiently inefficient. Thus, common law can produce better outcomes only under this scenario. To test this prediction, I construct a novel continuous measure of legal traditions for 49 transplants, many of which reformed the transplanted institutions, and I devise an instrumental variables approach dealing with the endogeneity of both legal and political institutions. The evidence, which is robust across several strategies, confirms the model implications and stresses the relevance of distinguishing between proxies measuring only the technological efficiency of the law and those picking up also the citizenry's satisfaction with its cultural content.
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Mary Lewis, Fiona Shapland & Rebecca Watts American
Journal of Human Biology, January/February 2016, Pages 48-56
Objectives: This study provides the first large scale analysis of the age at which adolescents in medieval England entered and completed the pubertal growth spurt. This new method has implications for expanding our knowledge of adolescent maturation across different time periods and regions.
Methods: In total, 994 adolescent skeletons (10-25 years) from four urban sites in medieval England (AD 900-1550) were analyzed for evidence of pubertal stage using new osteological techniques developed from the clinical literature (i.e., hamate hook development, cervical vertebral maturation (CVM), canine mineralization, iliac crest ossification, and radial fusion).
Results: Adolescents began puberty at a similar age to modern children at around 10-12 years, but the onset of menarche in girls was delayed by up to 3 years, occurring around 15 for most in the study sample and 17 years for females living in London. Modern European males usually complete their maturation by 16-18 years; medieval males took longer with the deceleration stage of the growth spurt extending as late as 21 years.
Conclusions: This research provides the first attempt to directly assess the age of pubertal development in adolescents during the 10th-17th centuries. Poor diet, infections, and physical exertion may have contributed to delayed development in the medieval adolescents, particularly for those living in the city of London. This study sheds new light on the nature of adolescence in the medieval period, highlighting an extended period of physical and social transition.
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Out of Africa: Human Capital Consequences of In Utero Conditions
Victor Lavy, Analia Schlosser & Adi Shany
NBER Working Paper, January 2016
Abstract:
This paper investigates the effects of environmental conditions during pregnancy on later life outcomes using quasi-experimental variation created by the immigration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel in May 24th 1991. Children in utero prior to immigration faced dramatic differences in medical care technologies, prenatal conditions, and prenatal care at the move from Ethiopia to Israel. One of the major differences was adequacy of micronutrient supplements, particularly iodine, iron and folic acid. We find that children exposed in an earlier stage of the pregnancy to better environmental conditions in utero have two decades later higher educational attainment (lower repetition and dropout rates and higher Baccalaureate rate) and higher education quality (achieve a higher proficiency level in their Baccalaureate diploma). The average treatment effect we estimate is driven mainly by a strong effect on girls. We find however, no effect on birth weight or mortality for girls.
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Flip the Switch: The Impact of the Rural Electrification Administration 1935-1940
Carl Kitchens & Price Fishback
Journal of Economic History, December 2015, Pages 1161-1195
Abstract:
To isolate the impact of access to electricity on local economies, we examine the impact of the Rural Electrification Administration low-interest loans in the 1930s. The REA provided loans to cooperatives to lay distribution lines to farms and aid in wiring homes. Consequently, the number of rural farm homes electrified doubled in the United States within five years. We develop a panel data set for the 1930s and use changes within counties over time to identify the effect of the REA loans on a wide range of socio-economic measures. The REA loans contributed significantly to increases in crop output and crop productivity and helped stave off declines in overall farm output, productivity, and land values, but they had much smaller effects on nonagricultural parts of the economy. The ex-ante subsidy from the low-interest loans was large, but after the program was completed, nearly all of the loans were fully repaid, and the ultimate cost to the taxpayer was relatively low.