On the economic importance of the determinants of long-term growth

The economic literature has identified dozens of statistically significant determinants of long-run growth, from malaria ecology and ruggedness to genetic diversity and the timing of the Neolithic transition. Yet, the economic importance of these factors - understood as their contribution to variation in current GDP per capita - is unknown. In this paper, I propose two complementary approaches to measure economic importance, and apply these methods to assess the importance of the determinants of longrun growth. I find that distance to coast, malaria ecology, and legal origins are the three most important factors explaining contemporary development, ceteris paribus. Temperature, the share of the population from European descent, and the timing of the Neolithic transition are also important. In comparison, ruggedness, genetic diversity, slave trade intensity, and ethnolinguistic fragmentation appear to be relatively unimportant. The effects of malaria ecology, of temperature, of the share of the population from European descent, and of the timing of the Neolithic transition are mutually reinforcing.