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  4. July 2014
  5. Persistence of Fortune: Accounting for Population Movements, There Was No Post-Columbian Reversal

American Economic Journal:
Macroeconomics

ISSN 1945-7707 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7715 (Online)

Persistence of Fortune: Accounting for Population Movements, There Was No Post-Columbian Reversal

  • Areendam Chanda
  • C. Justin Cook
  • Louis Putterman
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics
vol. 6, no. 3, July 2014
(pp. 1–28)
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Abstract

Using data on place of origin of today's country populations and the indicators of level of development in 1500 used by Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2002), we confirm a reversal of fortune for colonized countries as territories, but find persistence of fortune for people and their descendants. Persistence results are at least as strong for three alternative measures of early development, for which reversal for territories, however, fails to hold. Additional exercises lend support to Glaeser et al.'s (2004) view that human capital is a more fundamental channel of influence of precolonial conditions on modern development than is quality of institutions.

Citation

Chanda, Areendam, C. Justin Cook, and Louis Putterman. 2014. "Persistence of Fortune: Accounting for Population Movements, There Was No Post-Columbian Reversal." American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 6 (3): 1–28. DOI: 10.1257/mac.6.3.1

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • J11 Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
  • J24 Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
  • N10 Economic History: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations: General, International, or Comparative
  • N30 Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: General, International, or Comparative
  • O15 Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
  • O43 Institutions and Growth
  • R11 Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
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