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Institutions vs. Policies : A Tale of Two Islands
Henry, Peter Blair - 2008
for explaining differences in their subsequent economic development. Barbados and Jamaica provide a striking counter … 1960 to 2002, Barbados' GDP per capita grew roughly three times as fast as Jamaica's. Consequently, the income gap between … Barbados and Jamaica is now almost five times larger than at the time of independence. Since their property rights and legal …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012464043
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The Social Implications of Sugar : Living Costs, Real Incomes and Inequality in Jamaica c1774
Burnard, Trevor - 2017
wealth Jamaica was the most unequal place in the pre-modern world. Furthermore, all of these characteristics applied to the …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012453817
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The Profitabality of Colonialism
Grossman, Herschel I. - 1993
This paper develops an analytical framework for studying colonial investment from the perspective of neoclassical political economy. The distinguishing feature of colonial investment in this model is that the metropolitan government restricts the amount of investment in the colony in order to...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012474530
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Historical Legacies and African Development
Michalopoulos, Stelios - 2018
As Africa's role on the global stage is rising, so does the need to understand the shadow of history on the continent's economy and polity. We discuss recent works that shed light on Africa's colonial and precolonial legacies. The emerging corpus is remarkably interdisciplinary. Archives,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012480929
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Large Scale Institutional Changes : Land Demarcation Within the British Empire
Libecap, Gary D. - 2010
This paper examines the economics of large scale institutional change by studying the adoption of the land demarcation practices within the British Empire during the 17th through 19th Centuries. The advantages of systematic, coordinated demarcation, such as with the rectangular survey, relative...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012462831
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Equilibrium Fictions : A Cognitive Approach to Societal Rigidity
Hoff, Karla - 2010
This paper assesses the role of ideas in economic change, combining economic and historical analysis with insights from psychology, sociology and anthropology. Belief systems shape the system of categories ("pre-confirmatory bias") and perceptions (confirmatory bias), and are themselves...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012462860
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The Myth of the Frontier
García-Jimeno, Camilo - 2009
One of the most salient explanations for the distinctive path of economic and political development of the United States is captured by the 'Frontier (or Turner) thesis'. Turner argued that it was the presence of the open frontier which explained why the United States became democratic and, at...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012463873
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The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development : An Investigation of the Settler Mortality Data
Albouy, David Y. - 2008
In a seminal contribution, Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2001) argue property-rights institutions powerfully affect national income, using estimated mortality rates of early European settlers to instrument capital expropriation risk. However 36 of the 64 countries in their sample are assigned...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012464515
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Made in America? The New World, the Old, and the Industrial Revolution
Clark, Gregory - 2008
For two decades, the consensus explanation of the British Industrial Revolution has placed technological change and the supply side at center stage, affording little or no role for demand or overseas trade. Recently, alternative explanations have placed an emphasis on the importance of trade...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012464570
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Testing for the Economic Impact of the U.S. Constitution : Purchasing Power Parity across the Colonies versus across the States, 1748-1811
Grubb, Farley - 2008
The U.S. Constitution removed real and monetary trade barriers between the states. By contrast, these states when they were British colonies exercised considerable real and monetary autonomy over their borders. Purchasing power parity is used to measure how much economic integration between the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012464810