We exploit differences in the mortality rates faced by European colonialists to estimate the effect of institutions on … could settle in the colony. In places where Europeans faced high mortality rates, they could not settle and they were more … supporting these hypotheses. Exploiting differences in mortality rates faced by soldiers, bishops and sailors in the colonies in …

obtain estimates of mortality by disease before the 1940s from the League of Nations and national public health sources …. Using these data, we construct an instrument for changes in life expectancy, referred to as predicted mortality, which is … based on the pre-intervention distribution of mortality from various diseases around the world and dates of global …