The persistence literature in economics and related disciplines connects recent outcomes to events long ago. This influential literature marks a promising development but has drawn criticism. We discuss two prominent examples that ground the rise of the Nazi Party in distant historical roots....

Economists have reported econometric results that rely on estimates of the population of every country in the world for the past two thousand or more years. The underlying source is usually McEvedy and Jones’ Atlas of World Population History, published in 1978. The McEvedy and Jones data have...

The persistence literature in economics and related disciplines connects recent outcomes to events long ago. This influential literature marks a promising development but has drawn criticism. We discuss two prominent examples that ground the rise of the Nazi Party in distant historical roots....