State history and economic development: evidence from six millennia

Abstract

The presence of a state is one of the most reliable historical predictors of social and economic development. In this article, we complete the coding of an extant indicator of state presence from 3500 BCE forward for almost all but the smallest countries of the world today. We outline a theoretical framework where accumulated state experience increases aggregate productivity in individual countries but where newer or relatively inexperienced states can reach a higher productivity maximum by learning from the experience of older states. The predicted pattern of comparative development is tested in an empirical analysis where we introduce our extended state history variable. Our key finding is that the current level of economic development across countries has a hump-shaped relationship with accumulated state history. Keywords State historyWe are grateful for useful comments from Carl-Johan Dalgaard, Jakob Gerner Hariri, Sascha Becker and four anonymous referees and from seminar participants at University of Copenhagen and Brown University. We also thank Taewan Roh and Nicholas Carter for valuable research assistance. Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10887-017-9152-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Traditional law in times of the nation state: why is it so prevalent?

“…Countries that developed early statehood, according to Bockstette et al (2002) and Borcan et al (2018), are less likely to formally recognize traditional law today, which would be in line with our third hypothesis. However, religious law is more likely to be recognized in these countries and the quality and use of traditional law is not different from other countries.…”

“…Arguments outlining the advantages of an early state have been put forward by Bockstette et al (2002), and more recently by Borcan et al (2018). One causal mechanism linking state antiquity to the contemporaneous prevalence of traditional law would be the earlier development of an effective legal system under the control of the state.…”

The imperial roots of global trade

“…One way to understand our imperial capital measure is as a bilateral index akin to the state history index introduced by Bockstette et al (2002) and extended by Borcan et al (2018). While the state history index captures the history of individual state institutions in a location (or the characteristics of people who used to live there at a certain point in time as in Putterman and Weil 2010), our measure captures shared formal and informal institutions and a common heritage between locations.…”

Plague, Politics, and Pogroms: The Black Death, the Rule of Law, and the Persecution of Jews in the Holy Roman Empire

“…In a similar vein, Leeson and Russ (2015) argue that contested religious markets help to explain the intensity of witch-hunts in the early modern period. These debates have contemporary relevance as many of the poorest parts of the world lie in those area of sub-Saharan Africa with little history of statehood (Gennaioli and Rainer, 2007;Chanda and Putterman, 2007;Borcan et al, 2014;Michalopoulos and Papaioannou, 2013) where the reach of the government does not extend far beyond the capital city (Michalopoulos and Papaioannou, 2014).…”