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Tropics, Germs, and Crops: How Endowments Influence Economic Development

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  • William Easterly

    ()

  • Ross Levine

Abstract

Does economic development depend on geographic endowments like temperate instead of tropical location, the ecological conditions shaping diseases, or an environment good for grains or certain cash crops? Or do these endowments of tropics, germs, and crops affect economic development only through institutions or policies? We test the endowment, institution, and policy views against each other using cross country evidence. We find evidence that tropics, germs, and crops affect development through institutions. We find no evidence that tropics, germs, and crops affect country incomes directly other than through institutions, nor do we find any effect of policies on development once we control for institutions.

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File URL: http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/2776
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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Center for Global Development in its series Working Papers with number 15.

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Length: 55 pages
Date of creation: Oct 2002
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:cgd:wpaper:15

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Web page: http://www.cgdev.org

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Keywords: economic development; geographic endowments;

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References

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As found on the RePEc Biblio, the curated bibliography for Economics:
  1. > Environmental and Natural Resource Economics > Climate economics
  2. > Environmental and Natural Resource Economics > Climate economics > Climate and development
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