We analyze the relationship between pre-colonial warfare and long-run development patterns in India. We construct a new geocoded database of historical interstate conflicts on the Indian subcontinent, from which we compute measures of local exposure to pre-colonial warfare. We document a...

We test the reproducibility and replicability of Dincecco et al. (2022), which reports a positive relationship between pre-colonial interstate warfare and long-run development patterns across India. Overall, we confirm that all of the study's estimates are computationally reproducible by using...

This paper studies state failure and governance in two conflict-states in the Middle East: Iraq and Somalia. Iraq is currently undergoing a social experiment under which a new form of government is being constructed after the passage of autocratic rule. The government envisaged is a...

This paper studies state failure and governance in two conflict-states in the Middle East: Iraq and Somalia. Iraq is currently undergoing a social experiment under which a new form of government is being constructed after the passage of autocratic rule. The government envisaged is a...

We analyze the conditions under which internal conflict can promote or impede state development, taking imperial China as a laboratory. We develop a novel theoretical framework in which local elites and the central state interact over the provision of internal security. Using new micro-level...

This paper considers the contribution of the developmental state literature to comparative historical analysis, with a particular emphasis on methodological issues: the role of single and comparative case studies, counter-factual analysis, the nature of historical explanation and the...

In this paper we investigate the impact of Taiping Rebellion in the mid-nineteenth century on later economic development in China. We use a unique prefecture-level dataset on containing civil war intensity to assess whether the war damage led to persistent economic effect. We compare the heavily...

This paper analyzes the constitutional history of China, with the aim of explaining how and why the policies that produced its rapid growth came to be adopted. The paper argues that constitutional reforms played important roles in China's economic development and are likely to do so in the...

This paper analyzes the constitutional history of China, with the aim of explaining how and why the policies that produced its rapid growth came to be adopted. The paper argues that constitutional reforms played important roles in China's economic development and are likely to do so in the...