The Colonial Legacy in India: How Persistent Are the Effects of Historical Institutions?

Lakshmi Iyer and Coleson Weir

No 17051, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: Using updated data, we analyze the long-run effects of two British colonial institutions established in India. Iyer (2010) showed that areas under direct colonial rule had fewer schools, health centers, and roads than areas under indirect colonial rule. Two decades later, we find that these differences have been eliminated. Banerjee and Iyer (2005) found lower agricultural investments and productivity in areas with landlord-based colonial land tenure systems. Our updated data finds that only some of these differences have been eliminated. We conclude that the impact of colonial institutions can eventually fade away under the influence of targeted policies.

Keywords: historical institutions; colonial rule; land tenure; agriculture; public goods; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N45 O12 O13 P14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2024-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev, nep-evo, nep-his and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp17051.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The colonial legacy in India: How persistent are the effects of historical institutions? (2025)
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:iza:izadps:dp17051

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark Fallak ().