the colonial inheritance

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue Oct 10 13:21:04 PDT 2000


"The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical

Investigation"

BY: DARON ACEMOGLU

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Department of Economics

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

SIMON JOHNSON

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Sloan School of Management

JAMES A. ROBINSON

University of California at Berkeley

Department of Political Science

Document: Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection:

http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=244582

Paper ID: MIT Dept. of Economics Working Paper No. 00-22

Date: September 2000

Contact: DARON ACEMOGLU

Email: Mailto:daron at mit.edu

Postal: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Department of Economics

E52-280b

50 Memorial Drive

Cambridge, MA 02142 USA

Phone: 617-253-1927

Fax: 617-253-1330

Co-Auth: SIMON JOHNSON

Email: Mailto:sjohnson at mit.edu

Postal: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Sloan School of Management

Room E52-562

50 Memorial Drive

Cambridge, MA 02142 USA

Co-Auth: JAMES A. ROBINSON

Email: Mailto:jamesar at socrates.berkeley.edu

Postal: University of California at Berkeley

Department of Political Science

210 Barrows Hall

Berkeley, CA 94720

ABSTRACT:

We exploit differences in the mortality rates faced by European

colonialists to estimate the effect of institutions on economic

performance. Our argument is that Europeans adopted very

different colonization policies in different colonies, with

different associated institutions. The choice of colonization

strategy was, at least in part, determined by whether Europeans

could settle in the colony. In places where Europeans faced high

mortality rates, they could not settle and they were more likely

to set up worse (extractive) institutions. These early

institutions persisted to the present. We document evidence

supporting these hypotheses. Exploiting differences in mortality

rates faced by soldiers, bishops and sailors in the colonies in

the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries as an instrument for current

institutions, we estimate large effects of institutions on

income per capita. Our estimates imply that differences in

institutions explain approximately three-quarters of the income

per capita differences across former colonies. Once we control

for the effect of institutions, we find that countries in Africa

or those closer to the equator do not have lower incomes.

JEL Classification: O1, P1



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