This paper estimates the effect of institutions on economic performance using cross-city data from China. We argue that China’s ongoing reforms are part of a long and circuitous historical transition from antiquity to modernity, which started about 150 years ago. Learning from Western...

Whether natural resources boost or deter economic development remains an open question in the literature. Papyrakis and Gerlagh (2007) found a significant negative association between economic growth and resource abundance at a U.S.-state level. They demonstrated that resource abundance crowds...