This paper establishes that the Caloric Suitability Index (CSI) dominates the commonly used measure of agricultural suitability in the examination of the effect of land productivity on comparative economic development. The analysis demonstrates that the agricultural suitability index does not...

This research explores the effects of culture on technological diffusion and economic development. It shows that culture's direct effects on development and barrier effects to technological diffusion are, in general, observationally equivalent. In particular, using a large set of measures of...

This research explores the economic causes and consequences of language structures. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that variations in pre-industrial geographical characteristics that were conducive to higher return to agricultural investment, larger gender gap in...

This research explores the geographical origins of the coevolution of cultural and linguistic traits in the course of human history, relating the geographical roots of long-term orientation to the structure of the future tense, the agricultural determinants of gender bias to the presence of...

Many of the exports of developing countries are channeled through global value chains (GVCs), which also act as conduits for new technologies. However, new capabilities and productive employment remain limited so far to a tiny sliver of globally integrated firms. GVCs and new technologies...

This research explores the origins of the distribution of time preference across regions. It advances the hypothesis, and establishes empirically that geographical variations in the natural return to agricultural investment have had a persistent effect on the distribution of time preference...