Abstract
The presence of a state is one of the most reliable historical predictors of social and economic development. In this article, we complete the coding of an extant indicator of state presence from 3500 BCE forward for almost all but the smallest countries of the world today. We outline a theoretical framework where accumulated state experience increases aggregate productivity in individual countries but where newer or relatively inexperienced states can reach a higher productivity maximum by learning from the experience of older states. The predicted pattern of comparative development is tested in an empirical analysis where we introduce our extended state history variable. Our key finding is that the current level of economic development across countries has a hump-shaped relationship with accumulated state history.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1-40 |
| Journal | Journal of Economic Growth |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 8 Dec 2017 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Mar 2018 |
Keywords
- State history
- Comparative development
- Institutions
- Deep roots
Access to Document
- Published manuscript
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Profiles
-
Oana Borcan
- School of Economics - Associate Professor in Economics
- Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science - Member
- Applied Econometrics And Finance - Member
- Behavioural Economics - Member
- Behavioural and Experimental Development Economics - Member
Person: Research Group Member, Academic, Teaching & Research