Biogeography and long-run economic development

Abstract

The transition from a hunter-gatherer economy to agricultural production, which made possible the endogenous technological progress that ultimately led to the Industrial Revolution, is one of the most important events in thousands of years of humankind's economic development. In this paper we present theory and evidence showing that geographic and initial biogeographic conditions exerted decisive influence on the location and timing of transitions to sedentary agriculture, to complex social organization and, eventually, to modern industrial production. Evidence from a large cross-section of countries indicates that the effects of geography and biogeography on contemporary levels of economic development are remarkably strong.

Does medieval trade still matter? Historical trade centers, agglomeration and contemporary economic development

“…Trade (Nunn 2008(Nunn , 2011; gender roles (Alesina et al 2013); the Neolithic revolution (e.g., Ashraf and Galor 2011, Olsson and Hibbs 2005or Putterman 2008; the capacity to adopt and develop new technologies (Comin et al 2010); or the timing of human settlement (Ahlerup and Olsson 2012). 13 We argue that medieval trade can be added to the above list.…”

State history and economic development: evidence from six millennia

“…Whether initial biogeographic endowment and transition to agriculture (e.g. Hibbs and Olsson 2004;Olsson and Hibbs 2005;Galor and Moav 2007) or past technology adoption (Comin et al 2010), early and productive starts have been typically shown to translate into better income and institutions in present times.…”

Climatic Fluctuations and the Diffusion of Agriculture

“…Speci…cally, Diamond (1997) emphasizes that the transition to agriculture led to the rise of civilizations and conferred a developmental head-start to early agriculturalists, via the rapid development of written language, science, military technologies, and statehood. In line with this argument, Olsson and Hibbs (2005) show that geography and biogeography may, in part, predict contemporary levels of economic development through the timing of the transition to agriculture, whereas Ashraf and Galor (2011) establish the Malthusian link from technological advancement to population growth, demonstrating the explanatory power of the timing of the Neolithic Revolution for population density in pre-industrial societies. 2 Moreover, Moav (2002, 2007) and Galor and Michalopoulos (2012) argue that the Neolithic Revolution triggered an evolutionary process that a¤ected comparative development, whereas Comin, Easterly and Gong (2010) …nd that historical technology adoption, largely shaped by the timing of the transition to agriculture, has a signi…cant impact on contemporary economic performance.…”

“…Thus, the speci…cation examined in Column 2 augments the preceding analysis with controls for geographic variables from the study of Olsson and Hibbs (2005), including an index gauging climatic favorability for agriculture, as well as the size and orientation of the landmass, which, as p-value is from the joint-signi…cance test of the linear and quadratic terms of temperature volatility; (vii) Heteroskedasticity robust standard error estimates are reported in parentheses; (viii) The standard error estimate for the optimal temperature volatility is computed via the delta method; (ix) *** denotes statistical signi…cance at the 1% level, ** at the 5% level, and * at the 10% level. Notes : (i) The depicted relationship re ‡ects a quadratic …t of the relevant data on an "augmented component plus residual" plot (see the discussion in footnote 20 for additional details); (ii) The underlying regression corresponds to the speci…cation examined in Column 8 of Table 1. argued by Diamond (1997), played an important role by enhancing the availability of domesticable species and by facilitating the di¤usion of agricultural technologies along similar environments.…”

“…where Y ST i is the number of thousand years elapsed since the Neolithic Revolution in country i, as reported by Putterman (2008); V OL i is the temperature volatility prevalent in country i during either the contemporary or the historical (1500-1900) time horizon; T M EAN i is the mean temperature (in degrees Celsius) of country i during the corresponding time period; LDIST i is the log of the great-circle distance (in kilometers) to the closest Neolithic frontier, included here as a control for the timing of the arrival of agricultural practices via spatial technological di¤usion from the frontier; 13 LAT i is the absolute latitude (in degrees) of the geodesic centroid of country i, as reported by the CIA World Factbook ; AREA i is the total land area (in millions of square kilometers) of country i, as reported by the World Bank's World Development Indicators; 14 i is a vector of continental dummies; i is a vector of biogeographic variables employed by the study of Olsson and Hibbs (2005), such as climate, the size and geographic orientation of the landmass, and the numbers of prehistoric domesticable species of plants and animals, included here as controls for the impact of biogeographic endowments as hypothesized by Diamond (1997); and, …nally, " i is a country-speci…c disturbance term. 15 To …x priors, the reduced-form prediction of the theory -i.e., that intermediate levels of climatic volatility should be associated with an earlier adoption of agriculture -implies that, in the context of the regression speci…cation, the timing of the Neolithic Revolution, Y ST i , and temperature volatility, V OL i , should be characterized by a hump-shaped relationship across countries -i.e., 1 > 0, 2 < 0, and V OL = 1 = (2 2 ) 2 V OL min ; V OL max .…”