IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejmac/v6y2014i3p1-28.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Areendam Chanda
  • C. Justin Cook
  • Louis Putterman

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Areendam Chanda & C. Justin Cook & Louis Putterman, 2014. "Persistence of Fortune: Accounting for Population Movements, There Was No Post-Columbian Reversal," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(3), pages 1-28, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejmac:v:6:y:2014:i:3:p:1-28
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/mac.6.3.1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/mac.6.3.1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/mac/app/0603/2013-0032_app.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/mac/data/0603/2013-0032_data.zip
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/mac/ds/0603/2013-0032_ds.zip
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Spolaore, Enrico & Wacziarg, Romain, 2014. "Long-Term Barriers to Economic Development," Handbook of Economic Growth,in: Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 3, pages 121-176 Elsevier.
    2. Anastasia Litina, 2016. "Natural land productivity, cooperation and comparative development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 21(4), pages 351-408, December.
    3. Okoye, Dozie & Pongou, Roland, 2015. "Sea Change: The Competing Long-Run Impacts of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Missionary Activity in Africa," MPRA Paper 66221, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. repec:eee:jbfina:v:89:y:2018:i:c:p:169-191 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Oana Borcan & Ola Olsson & Louis Putterman, 2018. "State history and economic development: evidence from six millennia," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 1-40, March.
    6. William Easterly & Ross Levine, 2016. "The European origins of economic development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 225-257, September.
    7. Fan Duan & Bulent Unel, 2017. "Persistence of Cities: Evidence from China," Departmental Working Papers 2017-08, Department of Economics, Louisiana State University.
    8. Bonick, Matthew & Farfán-Vallespín, Antonio, 2018. "The reversal of fortune, extractive institutions and the historical roots of racism," The Constitutional Economics Network Working Papers 06-2018, University of Freiburg, Department of Economic Policy and Constitutional Economic Theory.
    9. Bonick, Matthew & Farfan-Vallespin, Antonio, 2018. "The Reversal of Fortune, Extractive Institution and the Historical Roots of Racism," Annual Conference 2018 (Freiburg, Breisgau): Digital Economy 181569, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    10. Timothy J Hatton & Zachary Ward, 2018. "International Migration in the Atlantic Economy 1850 - 1940," CEH Discussion Papers 02, Centre for Economic History, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    11. Ho, Chi Pui, 2016. "GeoPopulation-Institution Hypothesis: Reconciling American Development Process and Reversal of Fortune within a Unified Growth Framework," MPRA Paper 73863, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Ertan, Arhan & Fiszbein, Martin & Putterman, Louis, 2016. "Who was colonized and when? A cross-country analysis of determinants," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 165-184.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • N10 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - General, International, or Comparative
    • N30 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - General, International, or Comparative
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • O43 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Institutions and Growth
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists or Wikipedia pages:
    1. Persistence of Fortune: Accounting for Population Movements, There Was No Post-Columbian Reversal (AEJ.MA 2014) in ReplicationWiki

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejmac:v:6:y:2014:i:3:p:1-28. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Michael P. Albert). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.