We exploit differences in casualties sustained in pre-modern wars to estimate the impact of fiscal capacity on economic performance. In the past, states fought different amounts of external conflicts, of various lengths and magnitudes. To raise the revenues to wage wars, states made fiscal...

We examine the long-term links between state capacity and economic performance. Our database is novel and spans 11 countries and 4 centuries in Europe, the birthplace of modern economic growth. A dynamic simultaneous equation panel model indicates that the performance effects of states with...

We devise a nonparametric test of strategic behavior in a multiproduct Cournot oligopoly. It is assumed that firms have cost functions that do not change over the period of observation but that market demand can change in each period. Market prices and firm-specific production quantities are...

The conventional view is that an increase in the value of a natural resource will lead private property to emerge. Many Igbo groups in Nigeria, however, curtailed private rights over palm trees in response to the palm produce trade of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I present a...

In this review, I discuss the role of African institutions in general and pre-colonial institutions in particular in explaining present-day African poverty. Six of the most often cited explanations of African poverty -- geography, ethnolinguistic fractionalization, the slave trades, colonial...

Nigeria's Benin region was a major rubber producer in 1960. In 1921, however, the government abandoned the industry as a failure. I explain why rubber did not take hold before 1921. British conquest was motivated in part by the region's wild rubber resources. The government was unable to protect...

The ``land abundance'' view of African history uses sparse population to explain economic institutions. I provide supporting evidence from the Egba of Nigeria. I use early colonial court records to show that Egba institutions fit the theory's predictions. Before 1914, the Egba had poorly defined...

I show how abundant land and scarce labor shaped African institutions before colonial rule. I present a model in which exogenous land quality and endogenously evolving population determine the existence of land rights, slavery, and polygyny. I use cross-sectional data on pre-colonial African...

Climate change is expected to displace millions of involuntary migrants in Bangladesh. We draw on history to show that these ``environmental refugees'' can play a positive role in the regions that receive them by looking at the partition of India. We use an instrumental variables (IV) strategy...

I test Bates' view that trade across ecological divides promoted the development of states in pre-colonial Africa. My main result is that sub-Saharan societies in ecologically diverse environments had more centralized pre-colonial states. I use spatial variation in rainfall to control for...