IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/qjecon/v138y2023i2p1173-1231..html

The Fractured-Land Hypothesis

Author

Listed:
  • Jesús Fernández-Villaverde
  • Mark Koyama
  • Youhong Lin
  • Tuan-Hwee Sng

Abstract

Patterns of state formation have crucial implications for comparative economic development. Diamond (1997) famously argued that “fractured land” was responsible for China’s tendency toward political unification and Europe’s protracted polycentrism. We build a dynamic model with granular geographical information in terms of topographical features and the location of productive agricultural land to quantitatively gauge the effects of fractured land on state formation in Eurasia. We find that topography alone is sufficient but not necessary to explain polycentrism in Europe and unification in China. Differences in land productivity, in particular the existence of a core region of high land productivity in northern China, deliver the same result. We discuss how our results map into observed historical outcomes, assess how robust our findings are, and analyze the differences between theory and data in Africa and the Americas.

Suggested Citation

  • Jesús Fernández-Villaverde & Mark Koyama & Youhong Lin & Tuan-Hwee Sng, 2023. "The Fractured-Land Hypothesis," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 138(2), pages 1173-1231.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:138:y:2023:i:2:p:1173-1231.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/qje/qjad003
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    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. Delis, Manthos D. & Iosifidi, Maria, 2025. "Determinants of global loan pricing: Creditor rights or country size?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    2. Ruixue Jia & Gérard Roland & Yang Xie, 2021. "A Theory of Power Structure and Institutional Compatibility: China vs. Europe Revisited," NBER Working Papers 28403, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Mark Koyama, 2021. "Hilton L. Root: Network Origins of the Global Economy: East vs. West in a Complex Systems Perspective," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 187(3), pages 533-535, June.
    4. Shuhei Kitamura & Nils-Petter Lagerlöf, 2025. "Battles and Capitals," ISER Discussion Paper 1290, Institute of Social and Economic Research, The University of Osaka.
    5. Roberto Ezcurra, 2024. "Sunlight, culture and state capacity," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 77(2), pages 285-315, May.
    6. Rafael Araujo & Vitor Possebom, 2025. "Potato Potahto in the FAO-GAEZ Productivity Measures? Nonclassical Measurement Error with Multiple Proxies," Papers 2502.12141, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2025.
    7. Xiong, Heyu, 2024. "Minor monarchs: The ‘Bad-Emperor’ problem in Chinese history," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(4), pages 813-824.
    8. Kitamura, Shuhei & Lagerlöf, Nils-Petter, 2021. "Cities, Conflict, and Corridors," OSF Preprints cfrzs, Center for Open Science.
    9. Moore, Andrew, 2023. "Mann's Imperial March : Modelling the role of marcher lords in ancient state development and expansion," Warwick-Monash Economics Student Papers 50, Warwick Monash Economics Student Papers.
    10. Haoyi Zhang & Tianyi Zhu, 2025. "Neither Consent nor Property: A Policy Lab for Data Law," Papers 2510.26727, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2026.
    11. repec:osf:osfxxx:cfrzs_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Desiree A. Desierto & Mark Koyama, 2025. "Feudal political economy," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 80(2), pages 619-658, September.
    13. Chu, Angus C. & Peretto, Pietro F. & Furukawa, Yuichi, 2024. "Political fragmentation versus a unified empire in a Malthusian economy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 222(C), pages 284-293.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H56 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - National Security and War
    • N40 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - General, International, or Comparative
    • P48 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Other Economic Systems - - - Legal Institutions; Property Rights; Natural Resources; Energy; Environment; Regional Studies

    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:oup:qjecon:v:138:y:2023:i:2:p:1173-1231.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 bibliographic 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/qje .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.