Acemoglu, Johnson, & Robinson (2002) have claimed that the world income distribution underwent a Reversal of Fortune from 1500 to the present, whereby formerly rich countries in what is now the developing world became poor while poor ones grew rich. We question their analysis with regard to both...

We investigate the relationship between mortality decline and urbanization, which has hitherto been proposed by demographers but has yet to be tested rigorously in a global context. Using cross‐national panel data, we find evidence of a robust negative correlation between crude death rates and...

Acemoglu, Johnson, & Robinson (2002) have claimed that the world income distribution underwent a "Reversal of Fortune" from 1500 to the present, whereby formerly rich countries in what is now the developing world became poor while poor ones grew rich. We question their analysis with regard to...

The importance of pre-colonial history on contemporary African development has become an important .eld of study within development economics in recent years. In particular Gennaioli and Rainer (2007) suggest that pre-colonial political centralization has had an impact on con- temporary levels...

There has long been an emphasis on the importance of decentralization in providing better quality public services in the developing world. In order to assess the effectiveness of decentralization I examine here the case study of Uganda, which has seen major decentralization of power over the...