This research examines theoretically and empirically the origins of agriculture. The theory highlights the role of climatic sequences as a fundamental determinant of both technological sophistication and population density in a hunter-gatherer regime. It argues that foragers facing volatile...

This paper addresses the complex and overlooked relationship between the receipt of workers’ remittances and institutional quality in the recipient country. Using a simple model, we show how an increase in remittance inflows can lead to deterioration of institutional quality – specifically,...

The view that policies directed at the real exchange rate can have an important effect on economic growth has been gaining adherents in recent years. Unlike the traditional “misalignment" view that temporary departures of the real exchange rate from its equilibrium level harm growth by...

This paper reports the results of a major study of the impact of international agricultural research, covering eleven crops in all major regions of the developing world, over the period 1960-2000. Although much of the "common wisdom" concerning the Green Revolution suggests that gains from...

Contemporary historians usually attribute the East India Company's military success in India to its military strength, and to the mutual distrust of Indian regimes. We argue these explanations, though correct, are incomplete. The credibility of the Company's commitments, even though imperfect,...

Supporters of mega-sporting events such as the World Cup and Olympics claim that these events attract hoards of wealthy visitors and lead to lasting economic benefits for the host regions. For this reason, cities and countries compete vigorously for the right to stage these spectacles. Recently,...

Trade and export, it is argued, spur economic growth. This paper studies the microeconomics of exporting. We build a heuristic model of transactions between exporters and producers and relate it to East India Company operations in colonial Bengal. Our model and the historical record stress two...

In most poor countries, small firms and self employment are the dominant forms of business enterprise. This phenomenon is true not only in agriculture and the service sector: even in manufacturing, large fractions of the workforce are self-employed. In Ghana, as an illustration, more than 75...

This paper examines the central hypothesis of the influential Malthusian theory, according to which improvements in the technological environment during the pre-industrial era had generated only temporary gains in income per capita, eventually leading to a larger, but not significantly richer,...