Lack of evidence has been the major obstacle to understanding trends and differences in human welfare over the millennia. This paper explains and applies methods that are obscure to most academics and essentially unknown to the general public. A millennial perspective is best obtained from...

Using the gravity model, we find evidence of three continental trading blocs: the Americas, Europe and Pacific Asia. Intra-regional trade exceeds what can be explained by the proximity of a pair of countries, their sizes and GNP/capitas, and whether they share a common border or language. We...

In contemporary data, the measured factor content of trade is far smaller than its predicted magnitude in the pure Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek framework, the so-called 'missing trade' mystery. We wonder if this problem has been there from the beginning: that is, we ask if the Heckscher-Ohlin theory...

Although we cannot conceive of processes of economic growth that do not involve institutional change, in this essay we outline some reasons why one should be cautious about grounding a theory of growth on institutions. We emphasize how very different institutional structures have often been...

We examine the effect of malaria on economic development in Africa over the very long run. Using data on the prevalence of the mutation that causes sickle cell disease we measure the impact of malaria on mortality in Africa prior to the period in which formal data were collected. Our estimate is...

Are states led by women less prone to conflict than states led by men? We answer this question by examining the effect of female rule on war among European polities over the 15th-20th centuries. We utilize gender of the first born and presence of a female sibling among previous monarchs as...

There are some striking similarities between the pre 1914 gold standard and EMU today. Both arrangements are based on fixed exchange rates, monetary and fiscal orthodoxy. Each regime gave easy access by financially underdeveloped peripheral countries to capital from the core countries. But the...

The French Revolution of 1789 had a momentous impact on neighboring countries. The French Revolutionary armies during the 1790s and later under Napoleon invaded and controlled large parts of Europe. Together with invasion came various radical institutional changes. French invasion removed the...

We employ the conjectural approach to estimate the growth of GDP per capita for the colonies and states of the mid-Atlantic region (Del., NJ, NY and Penn). In contrast to previous studies of the region's growth that relied heavily on the performance of the export sector, the conjectural method...

We document substantial within-country (cross-municipality) differences in incomes for a large number of countries in the Americas. A significant fraction of the within-country differences cannot be explained by observed human capital. We conjecture that the sources of within-country and...