The Origin of the State: Land Productivity or Appropriability?: Replication

[Introduction:] This is a replication of Mayshar et al. (2022) (henceforth MMP).1 The article posits that the state (defined as societal hierarchy such as tax-levying elites) originated from cultivation of appropriable cereal grains, contrary to the conventional theory that the state originated from increased land productivity following the adoption of agriculture. The article uses multiple datasets to demonstrate a causal effect of cereal cultivation on hierarchy (Claim 1) without finding a similar effect for land productivity (Claim 2), and that societies based on roots or tubers display levels of hierarchy similar to nonfarming societies (Claim 3). (...)