This paper uses a historical natural experiment – the opening of the Suez Canal – to investigate the relationship between geography and the formation of institutions. While the conventional view is that good geography (commodity endowment) inevitably favours the creation of extractive...

Existing literature suggests that either colonial settlement conditions or the identity of colonizer were influential in shaping the post-colonial institutional environment, which in turn has impacted long-run economic development, but has treated the two potential identification strategies as...