The Long-run Effects of Agricultural Productivity on Conflict, 1400-1900

This paper studies the causes and consequences of political centralization and fragmentation in China and Europe. We argue that the severe and unidirectional threat of external invasion fostered political centralization in China while Europe faced a wider variety of moderate external threats and remained politically fragmented. Our model allows us to explore the economic consequences of political centralization and fragmentation. Political centralization in China led to lower taxation and hence faster population growth during peacetime than in Europe. But it also meant that China was relatively fragile in the event of an external invasion. Our results are consistent with historical evidence of violent conflicts, tax levels, and population growth in both China and Europe.

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“…This data set is widely used by researchers in political science and economics (e.g., Iyigun, ; Besley and Reynal‐Querol, ; Iyigun et al., ).…”

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confidence: 99%

Unified China and Divided Europe

Koyama

Sng

2018

Int Economic Review

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“…, Dincecco and Onorato , Iyigun et al. ). The identifying assumption underlying our regression analysis is that, conditional on the control variables, the (instrumented) dummy variable for the Sui Canal captures effects that are solely due to the establishment of the canal and is unrelated to any other factors in the error term.…”

Section: Empirical Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Transport infrastructure, growth and persistence: The rise and demise of the Sui Canal

Flückiger

Ludwig

2019

Canadian J of Economics

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This paper investigates the effect of transport infrastructure on the spatial distribution of population over two millennia. Focusing on the Sui Canal, one of history's greatest infrastructure projects, we show that its completion in the 7th century CE led to a strong increase in population concentration along the newly established transport artery. We exploit the fact that large parts of the canal fell into disrepair after the 12th century to analyze the persistence of this effect. We find that in 2010, more than 800 years after the Sui Canal fell into disuse, regions once directly connected to the canal are still more populous than areas that never had access. However, this population concentration is not mirrored in economic development. GDP per capita is lower in areas that lay along the course of the canal. One potential explanation for this finding is a change in the value of locational fundamentals as well as a shift in investments to the benefit of coastal regions since the initiation of the Open Door Policy in 1978.

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“… 7 Consistent with this view of war as post-treatment to urbanization, Iyigun et al (2015) extend NQ to estimate a negative long-run effect of a permanent rise in agricultural productivity on conflict. By the same token, urbanization led to the rise of merchant and industrial classes that maybe were more “culturally attuned” to democracy.…”

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confidence: 95%

Endogenous democracy: causal evidence from the potato productivity shock in the old world

Barceló¹,

Rosas

2020

PSRM

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Despite a high cross-country correlation between development and democracy, it is difficult to gauge the impact of economic development on the probability that autocracies will transition to democracy because of endogeneity, especially due to reverse causation and omitted variable bias. Hence, whether development causes democracy remains a contested issue. We exploit exogeneity in the regional variation of potato cultivation along with the timing of the introduction of potatoes to the Old World (i.e., a potato productivity shock) to identify a causal effect of urbanization, a proxy for economic development, on democratization. Our results, which hold under sensitivity analyses that question the validity of the exclusion restriction, present new evidence of the existence of a causal effect of economic development on democracy.

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The Long-run Effects of Agricultural Productivity on Conflict, 1400-1900

Cited by 16 publications

References 27 publications

Unified China and Divided Europe

Unified China and Divided Europe

Transport infrastructure, growth and persistence: The rise and demise of the Sui Canal

Endogenous democracy: causal evidence from the potato productivity shock in the old world

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