This research suggests that favorable geographical conditions, that were inherently associated with inequality in the distribution of land ownership, adversely affected the implementation of human capital promoting institutions (e.g., public schooling and child labor regulations), and thus the...

Previous research has suggested that there is a relationship between land distribution and productivity in agriculture. This paper estimates a cross-country agricultural production function that includes for the first time measures of land distribution as elements of productivity. The measures...

This paper brings together development accounting techniques and the dual economy model to address the role that factor markets have in creating variation in aggregate total factor productivity (TFP). Development accounting research has shown that much of the variation in income across countries...

We study the influence of agricultural labor intensity on individualism across U.S. counties. To measure historical labor intensity in agriculture we combine data on crop-specific labor requirements and county-specific crop mix around 1900. To address endogeneity we exploit climate-induced...

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...

The literature has shown that the implied welfare gains from international financial integration are very small. We revisit the existing findings and document that welfare gains can be substantial if capital goods are not perfect substitutes. We use a model of optimal savings that includes a...

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...