Research on credit markets from developing economies, as well as work on the origin of institutions in general, has suggested that land inequality may play a role in determining financial development. In this paper we establish empirically that initial land inequality is a significant predictor...

This research develops a unified growth theory that captures the transition from the domination of geographical factors in the determination of productivity in early stages of development to the domination of institutional factors in mature stages of development. It identifies a novel channel...