Determinants and Economic Consequences of Colonization: A Global Analysis

Arhan Ertan, Louis Putterman and Martin Fiszbein

No 2012-5, Working Papers from Brown University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Research on economic growth suggests that the era of colonization has had an impact on the levels of economic development of countries around the globe. However, why some countries were colonized early, some late, and others not at all, and what effect these differences have had on current income, has not been studied systematically. In the first part of this paper, we show that both the occurrence and the timing of colonization can be explained by (a) differences in levels of pre-1500 development, (b) proximity to the colonizing powers, (c) disease environment, and (d) latitude. In the second part, we analyze the developmental consequences of colonization while taking the endogeneity of colonizationís occurrence and timing into account. Whereas naÔve estimates can suggest large impacts, we find that neither the fact nor the timing of colonization affect income today once colonizationís impact on the composition of the population and the quality of institutions is controlled for.

Keywords: Colonization; Growth; Institutions; Pre-Modern Development; Migration. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://economics.brown.edu/sites/g/files/dprerj72 ... ers/2012-5_paper.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bro:econwp:2012-5

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Brown University, Department of Economics Department of Economics, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Brown Economics Webmaster ().