This paper empirically tests the hypothesis that landed elites may block technological change and economic development if they fear that they will lose future political power (Acemoglu and Robinson (2002, 2006, and 2012). It exploits a plausible exogenous change in the distribution of political...

We analyze investment decisions when information is costly, with and without delegation to an agent. We use a rational-inattention model and compare it with a canonical signal-extraction model. We identify three "investment conditions". In "sour" conditions, no information is acquired and no...

For the period 1800 onwards, annual figures over GDP and GDP per capita for Sweden have been presented in different studies. For the 18th century no such annual series exist. The aim of this paper is to present annual data on GDP and GDP per capita in volume values for Sweden for the whole...

In this paper, we study the effects of education on the total factor productivity (TFP) of a large number of countries. We estimate TFP using a variant of augmented Solow growth model in which health capital is one of the factors of production. We find that quantity of education significantly...

In this study, we seek to understand the patterns of structural change, labor productivity growth and convergence in BRIC countries. In the first part, we employ the dataset of labor productivity from de Vries et al. (2012) and the Groningen Growth and Development Center (2013) and utilize the...

This paper reconstructs Revealed Comparative Advantages (RCA) and Economic Complexity Indices (ECI) for a large number of countries in the second half of the 19th century, by using data from the catalogues of five universal exhibitions held in Paris in 1855, 1867, 1878, 1889, and 1900. This...

This paper contributes to the debate on the origins of modern economic growth in Europe from a very long-run perspective using econometric techniques that allow for a long-range dependence approach. Different regimes, defined by endogenously estimated structural shocks, coincided with episodes...

This paper reconstructs Revealed Comparative Advantages (RCA) and Economic Complexity Indices (ECI) for a large number of countries in the second half of the 19th century, by using data from the catalogues of five universal exhibitions held in Paris in 1855, 1867, 1878, 1889, and 1900. This...

In the European political discourse, the potentially vast economic benefits derived from the European Union are taken for granted. In the academic debate, these economic benefits, even if measured in terms of GDP per capita growth, are much less consensual. There are severe methodological...

This paper examines the importance of institutional shocks to long-run development. Our empirical method offers a clear empirical test to distinguish between three models of institutional shocks. We define gradual institutional change without a major shock, institutional change imposed by a...