Comin, Diego; Easterly, William; Gong, Erick - In: American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 2 (2010) 3, pp. 65-97
We assemble a dataset on technology adoption in 1000 bc, 0 ad, and 1500 AD for the predecessors to today's nation states. Technological differences are surprisingly persistent over long periods of time. Our most interesting, strong, and robust results are for the association of 1500 AD...