Population, technology and fragmentation: The European miracle revisited

Nils-Petter Lagerlof ()

Journal of Development Economics, 2014, vol. 108, issue C, 87-105

Abstract: The effects of political fragmentation on long-run development seem to have changed over the course of human history. Technological leaders used to be empires, but the Industrial Revolution started in the fragmented Europe. This paper sets up a model to help us think about this puzzle. There are two sets of mechanisms at play: a standard scale effect, which benefits unified regions, since technology is a non-rivalrous good; and several competition effects, both negative (like wasteful armies) and positive (incentives to invest in new technologies). We apply the model to analyze the preindustrial divergence between China and Europe.

Keywords: Fragmentation; Malthusian growth model; Europe; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387814000091
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:deveco:v:108:y:2014:i:c:p:87-105

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2014.01.007

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig

More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().