Growth rates of per capita GDP are depressed by civil conflict to a degree that reflects its severity. Only the more severe conflicts - ones that affect at least half of the country by land area and/or cause more than 1,000 fatalities in at least one year - have a significant negative growth...

We decisively reject the hypothesis that geographical factors influence long-run only indirectly, through the quality of institutions. The direct influence of geography on per capita incomes is robust to the inclusion of a sub-Saharan Africa dummy and other tests. We obtain our results by...

We investigate the determinants of onset, duration and incidence of civil wars, and their sensitivity to different coding rules. Whatever the coding rule used, incidence of civil war is largely determined by poverty, country size, mountainous terrain and ethnic diversity. Poverty reduces the...

We use new data on the timing of the transition to agriculture, developed by Putterman and Trainor (2006), to test the theory of Diamond (1997) and Olsson and Hibbs (2005) that an earlier transition is reflected in higher incomes today. Our results confirm the theory, even after controlling for...

We study the long-term determinants of the high rates of HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly among women, with a focus on family structure and sexual behavior as shaped by the demographic shock following the transatlantic slave trade. First we show that, in clusters where polygyny...

We study the long-term determinants of the high rates of HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly among women, with a focus on family structure and sexual behavior as shaped by the demographic shock following the transatlantic slave trade. First we show that, in clusters where polygyny...

We investigate the impact of slavery on the current performances of the US economy. Over a cross section of counties, we find that the legacy of slavery does not affect current income per capita, but does affect current income inequality. In other words, those counties that displayed a higher...

We investigate the long term determinants of political and economic outcomes over a new data set composed of Mississippi counties. We analyze the effect of disfranchisement on voting registration at the end of the nineteenth century (1896-9), as well as the impact of voting registration on...

We study the evolution of racial educational inequality across US states from 1940 to 2000. We show that throughout this period, despite evidence of convergence, the racial gap in attainment between blacks and whites has been persistently determined by the initial gap. We obtain these results...

We evaluate the empirical relevance of de facto vs. de jure determinants of political power in the U.S. South between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. We apply a variety of estimation techniques to a previously unexploited dataset on voter registration by...