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This paper examines the effect of natural resources on the level of democracy in a set of countries. The main model is a fixed effects regression model, where the focus is on within-country variation over time. The effect of different resources is investigated, namely the effect of oil, diamonds and agriculture. Furthermore, a distinction is made between two broad types of resources, diffuse and point resources, to explore whether the effect on democracy is similar or different. Criticism in existing literature on the presence of the resource curse is taken into account. Production data on natural resources is used and not the common variable ‘resource exports-over-GDP’, the latter being flawed. A possible endogeneity problem is taken into account, as well as the persistence of democracy over time. I find evidence for a resource curse of oil on democracy. It is present in different model specifications, such as models with either fixed effects or a lagged dependent variable. There only seems to be very weak evidence for a negative effect of point resources on democracy, compared to the effect of diffuse resources. It is argued that this might be due to the geographic concentration of these types of resources, which enables governments and elite groups to capture resource rents.

This paper empirically investigates the biogeographic determinants of the human DRD4 exon III locus, a particular gene variant associated with the human personality trait of novelty-seeking behavior. Providing a novel compilation of worldwide DRD4 exon III allele frequencies in a large sample of indigenous populations around the world, this study employs population-specific biogeographic characteristics using hig h-resolution geospatial data. The estimates suggest that migratory distance from East Africa naturally selects for specific novelty-seeking traits, even controlling for a broad range of biogeographic determinants. Notably, land suitability for pastoral nomadism is significantly related to DRD4 exon III diversity. This result provides further credence to the general observation that novelty-seeking traits are quite common in nomadic populations, explaining why some societies failed to settle and to develop centralized states.

We estimate a time series model of weather shocks on English wheat yields for the early nineteenth century and use it to predict weather effects on yield levels from 1697 to 1871. This reveals that yields in the 1690s were depressed by unusually poor weather; and those in the late 1850s were inflated by unusually good weather. This has led researchers to overestimate the underlying growth of yields over the period by perhaps 50%. Correcting for this effect would largely reconcile the conflicting primal and dual estimates of productivity growth over the period.

The objective of this study is to make a further contribution to the debate on the causes of economic growth in the European Continent. It explains why agricultural labour productivity differences did not converge between 1950 and 2005 in Europe. We propose an econometric model, one combining both proximate and fundamental causes of economic growth. The results show that the continuous exit of labour power from the sector, coupled with the increased use of productive factors originating in other sectors of the economy, caused the efficiency of agricultural workers to rise. However, we offer a complete explanation of the role played by institutions and geographical factors. Thus, we detect a direct and inverse relation between membership of the EU and the Communist bloc and the productivity of agricultural labour. In addition, strong support for agriculture affected productivity negatively.

This article identifies hard-to-measure services, land/natural resources, and factory-less goods manufacturing as three priority areas for productivity research. It highlights three hard-to-measure sectors for special attention: health, education, and financial services, given the difficulty of measuring prices and output in these sectors. It also argues that with the increased attention to the environment it has become increasing important to incorporate land and natural resources into the production function. Finally, it points out that the classification issues associated with factory-less goods producers have implications for the measurement of inputs and outputs at the sectoral level and hence for productivity estimates.

Several recent papers suggest that the negative association between natural resource intensity and economic growth can be reversed if institutional quality is high enough. We try to understand this result in more detail by decomposing the resource measure, using alternative measures of both resources and institutions, and by studying different time periods. While an institutional reversal is present in many specifications, only ores and metals interacted with the ICRG measure of institutional quality consistently have a negative growth effect but a positive interaction that turns the curse around when institutions are good enough.

Australia and Norway have achieved modern levels of development as resource-based economies, thus avoiding the so-called resource curse. Their ability to achieve this rested heavily on repeated diversification into new resource products and industries. These processes relied largely on innovation, confirming the close ties that have existed between resource-based industries and knowledge-producing and disseminating sectors of society. We develop a resource-based diversification model that analyses the interaction between "enabling sectors" and resource industries and apply it to the historical experience of the two countries. Copyright 2013 The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Associazione ICC. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.

This article applies a constructivist perspective to the persistent transatlantic divergence over the regulation of genetically modified foods and crops. Political economy and institutionalism have so far dominated the literature. Notwithstanding their important insights, to achieve a better understanding of the nature and depth of transatlantic regulatory divergence, one must also study prevalent cultural values and identity-related public concerns regarding food and agriculture. These factors can be identified in public opinion trends and have fuelled resistance in Europe, while contributing to relative regulatory stability in the US. By conceptualizing cultural contexts as catalytic structures, the article also differs from more explicitly discursive accounts of political mobilization. Ultimately, however, an analysis of the cultural politics of agricultural biotechnology relies not only on the influence of pre-existing values and identities, but also takes account of the strategies (and material or other power resources) of political agents. © 2012 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The exploitation of coltan in Central Africa can be considered a case of conflict minerals due to its nature. Many international organizations and bodies, national governments and private sector organizations seek to address this conflict, in particular via transparency, certification and accountability along the material supply chain. This paper analyses the international trade dimension of coltan and gives evidence on the dimension of illicit trade of coltan. The authors start from the hypothesis that illicit trade of coltan sooner or later will enter the market and will be reflected in the statistics. The paper is structured in the following manner: first, a short section gives a profile of coltan production and markets; second, an overview of the mining situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and related actors. The third section addresses mechanisms, actors and measurement issues involved in the international trade of coltan. The final part draws lessons for certification and conflict analysis and offers some guidance for future research. The paper identifies two main possible gateways to trace illegal trade in coltan: the neighboring countries, especially Rwanda, and the importing countries for downstream production, in particular China. Our estimation is that the value of such illicit trade comes close to $27 million annually (2009), roughly one-fifth of the world market volume for tantalum production. With regard to any certification the paper concludes that this will become challenging for business and policy: (a) Central Africa currently is the largest supplier of coltan on the world market, many actors profit from the current situation and possess abilities to hide responsibility; (b) China will need to accept more responsibility, a first step would be the acceptance of the OECD guidelines on due diligence; (c) better regional governance in Central Africa comprises of resource taxation, a resource fund and fiscal coordination. An international task force may provide more robust data, however more research will also be needed.

Agriculture sector has become a strategic sector for all the countries in the world in the 21st century, because unhealthy, wrong and inadequate nutrition affects human health and health expenses negatively. On the other hand, arising food expenses collaterally with population growth arises the percentage of agriculture sector in the Gross National Product (GNP). Turkish Agricultural Activities Standard (TAS 41) will be leading for recording and controlling fiscally countries’ agricultural activities and preventing resource waste via right agriculture policies. The aim of the study is to lead legal authorities and applicators by identifying current and prospective problems of the countries whose economies depend on agriculture and will start applying the standard, like Turkey. For this purpose, literature search was done on periodical articles in national and international indexes since 2006.

This article uses a laboratory experiment to probe the proposition that property emerges anarchically out of social custom. We test the hypothesis that whalers in the 18th and 19th centuries developed rules of conduct that minimized the sum of the transaction and production costs of capturing their prey, the primary implication being that different ecological conditions led to different rules of capture. Ceteris paribus, we find that simply imposing two different types of prey is insufficient to observe two different rules of capture. Another factor is essential, namely, as Samuel Pufendorf theorized over 300 years ago, that the members of the community are civil minded . The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.

The accession to the European Union has opened new challenges for Romanian agriculture, which must implement the principles of the Common Agricultural Policy. These principles aim at achieving high performance agriculture, capable to ensure food security for the population and to adequately develop the rural area. The paper intends to analyse the performance of Romanian agriculture in relation to the agriculture in the European Union and to highlight the recorded regional disparities in order to fully exploit the potential of agriculture. Data Envelopment Analysis is the used method, which provides information for the relative assessment of performance in relation to the decision-making units, considered a gauge. The results of the analysis show the poor performance of agriculture in Romania, and the efficiency recorded at the level of the development regions varies.

The political and economic impact of country size has been a frequently discussed issue in social science. In accordance with the general hypothesis of Montesquieu, this paper demonstrates that there is a robust negative relationship between the size of country territory and a measure of the rule of law for a large cross-section of countries. We propose that there are two main reasons for this regularity; firstly that institutional quality often has the character of a local public good that is imperfectly spread across space from the capital to the hinterland, and secondly that a large territory usually is accompanied by valuable rents that tend to distort property rights institutions. Our empirical analysis further shows that whether the capital is centrally or peripherally located within the country matters for the average level of rule of law.

Se analiza la incidencia de la política agraria en Argentina entre 1933 y 1959. Se calcula el tipo de cambio real de equilibrio a los fines de estimar tasas nominales y efectivas de protección para trigo, maíz y lino. En los años (1933-1940) y (1953-1955) hubo protección directa positiva debido a las políticas de precios; las tasas se vuelven luego negativas por efectos de la política comercial. Las tasas de protección indirectas fueron negativas en todo el período, por lo que las tasas de protección total resultaron también negativas, siendo las más altas entre los años 1946 y 1955., The impact of agricultural policy in Argentina between 1933 and 1959 is discussed. The real equilibrium exchange rate is estimated for the purpose of estimating nominal and effective protection rates for wheat, corn and flax. During the years (1933-1940) and (1953-1955) the direct protection was positive due to price policies; rates then become negative due to the effects of trade policy. Indirect protection rates were negative throughout the period, for which total protection rates were also negative, with the highest values between the years 1946 and 1955., Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas

The argument for effective financial regulation to curb financial activity and associated volatility in primary commodity markets is now more compelling than ever, in the context of the renewed increase in food prices. However, as in much other financial regulation, the devil is in the detail. This paper considers recent patterns in global food markets and discusses some of the implications of recent moves to regulate financial activity in commodity futures markets in the US and the EU. Specific regulatory issues are considered and alternative strategies are considered.

This paper examines the central hypothesis of the influential Malthusian theory, according to which improvements in the technological environment during the preindustrial era had generated only temporary gains in income per capita, eventually leading to a larger, but not significantly richer, population. Exploiting exogenous sources of cross-country variations in land productivity and the level of technological advancement, the analysis demonstrates that, in accordance with the theory, technological superiority and higher land productivity had significant positive effects on population density but insignificant effects on the standard of living, during the time period 1–1500 CE. (JEL N10, N30, N50, O10, O40, O50)

Por mucho tiempo ha existido la idea de que los países con grandes reservas de recursos naturales tienen una gran ventaja con respecto a países con escasos recursos naturales. Sin embargo, el presente estudio muestra que dicha abundancia y la exportación creciente de los recursos naturales no conlleva necesariamente a un crecimiento económico del país “aventajado”, ya que esta abundancia debería estar acompañada de un marco institucional de buena calidad que aliente el intercambio y la producción, en detrimento de actividades redistributivas.

This interdisciplinary paper uses world-systems analysis as a theoretical framework to argue that both the 1870s, 1930’s economic depressions reduced mean global temperatures. As global consumer demand fell, factories worldwide began producing less commodities and, as a result, emitted less greenhouse gasses. We find that in both instances there is evidence to support the hypothesis that financial crises lead to cooler temperatures.

Oxford Economic Papers, 61 (4), ISSN:0030-7653, ISSN:1464-3812

The competition power of the Agricultural Bank of China has been dropping down for several years. The reason is that banks at the grass-roots level don’t think much of managing the subtle links. The paper uses the theory of butterfly effect in Chaos for reference to discusses the risks existed in the Agricultural Bank of China at the grass-roots level such as the credit risk, the incomplete internal control, the loose accounting system, the disorder market competitiveness, the brain drain, the weak service consciousness, the financial innovation lag and the unbalanced development. Finally eight pieces of advice are brought forward as the measures against the eight butterfly effects.

The accession of Serbia to the WTO is expected in 2008. In negotiations process, the most difficult is to reach agreement in agriculture. This sector is very sensitive in market access for biotechnological, economical and social reasons. The level of sensitivity varies between production branches. In the course of defining the schedules of market access commitments, it is crucial to keep in mind the need of reconciliation dynamics and level of market liberalisation with the obligations comprised in the EU Stabilization and Association Agreement. Export support policy also must conform to the Doha negotiations commitments.

This thesis presents three self-contained essays focusing on empirical questions in growth and development economics. Each article addresses specific questions on why countries perform differently. In particular, I analyse the effect of democracy on economic development, the relationship between natural resources and growth and the efficiency of foreign development assistance.In the first essay, Democracy, Consolidation and Growth, I analyse the effect of democracy on economic growth. In this context, I argue that an important aspect to consider is how consolidated political systems are. Put simply, I find that it is not only a question of how democratic countries are, but also how long they have been democratic. In other words, economic performance tends to improve with the duration of uninterrupted democracy. The performance of autocracies, on the other hand, tends to deteriorate over time. However, for newly established political systems, there seems to be a cost of being democratic. This implies that democracies only bear their fruit after some time. The analysis has important policy implications: To overcome initial straits, international assistance focused on democratic consolidation may be important, and a very good investment in fostering long-run development.The second essay, Resource Curse or not: A Question of Appropriability (together with Anne Boschini and Jesper Roine), is concerned with the relation between natural resources and economic development. For most laymen, as well as for most economists, it would seem reasonable that countries richly endowed in natural resources also benefit from this wealth. However, a large literature has found a systematic negative effect of natural resource abundance on economic growth. We suggest that this so-called resource curse is not determined by resource endowments alone, but rather by the interaction between the type of resources a country possesses, and the quality of institutions in the country. This combination of factors determines what we call the appropriability of a resource. The concept of appropriability captures the likelihood of natural resources leading to rentseeking, corruption or conflicts which, in turn, will harm economic development. Our results suggest that, if institutions are good enough, the curse may be turned into a blessing. This may explain why some countries, such as Norway and Botswana, tend to benefit from their resources, while others, such as Angola and Sierra Leone, do not.The third and final essay of this thesis, Foreign Sectoral Aid Fungibility, Growth and Poverty Reduction, is a contribution to the aid-efficiency literature, which is concerned with the question of whether aid helps or hinders economic development. Foreign development assistance is often targeted on specific public expenditure sectors. If this aid is not used in the sector for which it was granted (e.g. health, education) it is said to be fungible, and donors may end up financing something completely different from what they intended (e.g. military expenditures). The major concern about sectoral fungibility is that the alternative use of aid may be less productive or less socially useful. However, measuring fungibility is not sufficient to determine whether foreign sectoral aid fungibility is actually harmful. What is important is how the funds treated as fungible are used. The essay starts by obtaining estimates of fungibility for 57 countries. The results suggest that sectoral aid is indeed largely treated as fungible by recipient countries. Next, to assess the economic and health effects of fungibility, these estimates are incorporated into an empirical model of aid and growth as well as into a model of aid and infant mortality. Altogether, I find no evidence of more fungible sectoral aid leading to worse performance.

Spatiul european a fost conceput imediat dupa al doilea razboi mondial pentru economii inca dominant agricole si pentru care autonomia alimentara constituia o preocupare centrala. Din aceasta cauza, politica agricola comuna a devenit prima axa a constructiei comunitare ajungand sa absoarba pAna si astazi mai mult de jumatate din bugetul Comunitatii.

Settler economies are characterized by abundant natural resources, but natural capital is not homogeneous between countries and it can produce different consequences in terms of economic performance. This paper discusses the effect of natural resources on economic performance as part of the debate about the “curse of natural resources hypothesis”. We consider energy natural resources and focus on two settler societies, New Zealand and Uruguay. There is very little literature about the economic development of settler economies that identifies differences within the “club” countries that have different natural resources. We look for differences in energy natural endowments, basically coal and suitable conditions for hydroelectric generation, to explain at least partially the different welfare levels between the two economies. In the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century, New Zealand and Uruguay were similar in many ways such as production structure, movements in production factors and insertion in international markets, but there were huge differences in income per capita levels. To explain this, we need to study other aspects of the economic system. The analytical framework associated with the curse of natural resources offers some interesting lines of argument for our inquiry. The conformation of a “modern” production structure requires there to be sufficient energy supply at competitive costs, to justify exploiting the corresponding natural resources. Our analysis shows that New Zealand’s better performance in coal production and better natural conditions to generate electric energy at low cost –thus offering energy at low prices– explain those differences. New Zealand's advantage in energy endowments at least partially explains the development of a dairy sector, certain energy-intensive manufactures and a more efficient use of railways

A 2015 World Bank report on attainment of Millennium Development Goals concludes that the number of extremely poor has dropped substantially in all regions with the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa. We assess if poverty is in the African gene by revisiting the findings of Ashraf and Galor (2013, AER) and reformulating the ‘Out of Africa Hypothesis’ into a ‘Genetic Diversity Hypothesis’ for a ‘Within Africa Analysis’. We motivate this reformulation with five shortcomings arising for the most part from the 2015 findings of the African Gerome Variation Project, notably: limitations in the concept of space, African dummy in genetic diversity, linearity in migratory patterns, migratory origins and underpinnings of genetic diversity in Africa. Ashraf and Galor have concluded that cross-country differences in development can be explained by genetic diversity in a Kuznets pattern. Our results from an exclusive African perspective confirm the underlying hypothesis in a contemporary context, but not in the historical analysis. From a historical context, the nexus is U-shaped for migratory distance, mobility index and predicted diversity while for the contemporary analysis; it is hump-shaped for ancestry-adjusted predicted diversity. Hence, poverty is not in the African gene from a within-Africa comparative standpoint. Policy implications are discussed.

In this work, we highlight the “lessons from history” that can be drawn from a historical discussion and understanding of the past and present of resource-rich developing economies to obtain conditions for successful natural resources-based development. The conceptual core of our answer to those questions will be based on three key ideas. First, abundance of natural resources is closely associated with levels of economic development. Second, we emphasize that an abundance of natural resources is not a fixed situation. It is a process that reacts to changes in the structure of commodity prices and factor endowments, and progress requires capital, labour, technical change and appropriate institutional arrangements. Finally, history shows that institutional quality is the key factor to deal with abundant natural resources and, especially, with the rents derived from their use and exploitation. The ways in which natural resources interact with economic development are mediated by the performance of institutional arrangements in at least three dimensions: (i) institutions’ ability to limit rent-seeking opportunities that divert innovation and resources from productive avenues; (ii) political competition and participation relate to rules governing chief executive recruitment and selection, the fairness and impartiality of electoral processes, and constraints on executive power; and (iii) the characteristics of institutions that reduce transactional risk through proper enforcement of property rights. In sum, history is very clear in showing that natural capital is non-neutral for economic performance but it is a systemic component of economic development where institutional quality is the key component to deal with and create “curses” and “blessings” of natural resources.

Agricultural and food products have been increasingly exchanged during the last half century. With them, water has been virtually transferred among countries. Thus, this paper studies the evolution of virtual water flows on the long term, analyzing the main factors driving them by means of a Decomposition Analysis. In particular, our study points at a gradual increase in virtual water consumption as a result of agricultural and food products trade in the world from 1965 to 2010. At the global level, the increase in the volume of trade has been the main factor driving water consumption increase.

This paper examines convergence of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions caused by oil combustion for a panel of 86 countries considering the importance of analyzing several sub-periods separately. Also, the investigation points at the necessity of choosing a restricted global sample, which takes into account that, for instance, eastern bloc countries reacted differently to increasing world market crude prices than the Western economies. The analysis builds on examining the beta-convergence hypothesis in a neoclassical growth model setting with additional control variables such as combustion of solid fuels. The results reveal evidence in support of beta-convergence of CO2 emissions intensity due to oil combustion for the sub-periods 1973-1979 and 1979-1991, while no evidence for convergence was found for the post-1991 period. This is true both for the restricted global sample and the sub-samples comprised of western OECD economies. One possible interpretation of the results is that international carbon taxes or permit trading schemes may first be introduced for oil only.

This paper suggests a theoretical framework and provides empirical evidence for a hump-shaped relationship between the fraction of novelty-seeking traits in society and current levels of per capita income. The hypothesis is that novelty-seeking traits produce two countervailing effects on aggregate productivity and hence economic development. The beneficial effect consists in explorative knowledge acquisition, which contributes significantly to the process of economic development. The detrimental effect results from a certain amount of this knowledge not being used reliably for capital accumulation due to the high fraction of individuals engaged in exploration rather than in production. One main conclusion of the empirical analysis is that the high fraction of novelty-seeking individuals in society engaged in short-run explorative knowledge acquisition prevent permanent settlement and therefore act as an obstacle to the development of centralized states, which are a precursor to modern industrial production.

The known energy resource base is more than sufficient to provide a growing world population with energy on the scale to which the industrial countries have grown accustomed and to which the developing countries aspire. Environmental constraints exist but have promising solutions, provided farsighted policies are adopted in timely fashion. We illustrate the scale of the problem using a simple numerical scenario of world energy demand over the next century and calculating the implied increase in carbon emissions and atmospheric carbon concentrations. We conclude that action is needed soon to keep carbon concentrations below 500 parts per million as of 2050 and that the cost of mitigation will be less than 1 percent of gross world product as of 2050, assuming today’s promising technologies prove successful, but also that additional novel mitigation technologies will need to be developed and adopted after 2050.

Resumen Tomando como referencia el abastecimiento de la ciudad de Cadiz en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII y comienzos del XIX, el articulo analiza los cambios que tuvieron lugar en las areas de aprovisionamiento de la periferia espanola y plantea la cuestion de que la persistencia de la regulacion publica de los mercados triguero y harinero a traves de la alhondiga y de la tasa del pan no impidio que tambien el mercado - los comerciantes al por mayor de granos - jugara su papel. Las fuentes utilizadas son las cuentas de la alhondiga y las de la “factoria” britanica Cadiz.

What drives the long-term demand for mineral commodities? This paper provides empirical evidence on the long-run demand for mineral commodities since 1840. I extend the partial adjustment model to account for country-specific structures and technological change. I find that a one percent increase in manufacturing output leads to a 1.5 percent increase in the demand for aluminum and a one percent increase in the demand for copper. The estimated manufacturing output elasticities of demand for lead, tin, and zinc are far below one. The estimated price elasticities of demand are highly inelastic for all mineral commodities in the long run. My results suggest that industrialization in China, for example, will cause the consumption of aluminum and copper to increase at a considerably higher rate than the one of lead, tin, and zinc. All variables adjust slowly to equilibrium, which helps to explain the extended fluctuation in these markets.

The world is banking on a major increase in food production, if the dietary needs and food preferences of an increasing, and increasingly rich, population are to be met. This requires the further expansion of modern agriculture, but modern agriculture rests on a small number of highly productive crops and its expansion has led to a significant loss of global biodiversity. Ecologists have shown that biodiversity loss results in lower plant productivity, while agricultural economists have linked biodiversity loss on farms with increasing variability of crop yields, and sometimes lower mean yields. In this paper we consider the macro-economic consequences of the continued expansion of particular forms of intensive, modern agriculture, with a focus on how the loss of biodiversity affects food production. We employ a quantitative, structurally estimated model of the global economy, which jointly determines economic growth, population and food demand, agricultural innovations and land conversion. We show that even small effects of agricultural expansion on productivity via biodiversity loss might be sufficient to warrant a moratorium on further land conversion.

Electricity consumption will comprise an increasing share of global energy demand during the next two decades. In recent years, the increasing prices of fossil fuels and concerns about the environmental consequences of greenhouse gas emissions have renewed the interest in the development of alternative energy resources. In particular, the Fukushima Daiichi accident was a turning point in the call for alternative energy sources. Renewable energy is now considered a more desirable source of fuel than nuclear power due to the absence of risk and disasters. Considering that the major component of greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide, there is a global concern about reducing carbon emissions. In this regard, different policies could be applied to reducing carbon emissions, such as enhancing renewable energy deployment and encouraging technological innovations. Two main solutions may be implemented to reduce CO2 emissions and overcome the problem of climate change: replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources as much as possible and enhancing energy efficiency. In this paper, we discuss alternative technologies for enhancing renewable energy deployment and energy use efficiency.

Agricultural literature is one of the most important and oldest non-fictions genres in the world. This text gives us the first overview of extant agricultural treatises in Eurasia before c. 1500. With this overview, it is possible to give a better foundation to discussions on the role of knowledge. This literature also gives us indications about the importance of agriculture in different periods for a number of regions in Eurasia. An important part is discussion on method. The goal is to arrive at comparable numbers – to form the basis for analyze.

Is a lack of domestic energy resources necessarily a limiting factor to growth, as suggested for example by the work of Robert C. Allen? We examine the case of Denmark -- a country which historically had next to no domestic energy resources -- for which we present new historical energy accounts for the years 1800-2011. Focusing on the period of the first Industrial Revolution, we demonstrate that Denmark’s take off at the end of the nineteenth century was in fact relatively energy dependent. We relate this to her well-known agricultural transformation and development through the dairy industry. The Danish cooperative creameries, which spread throughout the country over the last two decades of the nineteenth century, were dependent on coal – a point which has not been stressed before in the literature. Denmark had next to no domestic coal deposits, but we demonstrate that her geography allowed cheap availability throughout the country through imports. Thus, Denmark might be seen as the exception that proves the rule: although modern energy forms are important for growth, domestic energy resources are not necessary, as long as it is possible to import them cheaply from elsewhere.

We estimate the impact of climate change on agricultural production in a panel of 127 countries from 1961 to 2002. In contrast to the existing literature we account for cross-sectional dependence and technology heterogeneity. We find no significant impact of climate change on agricultural production in high income countries, but significant adverse effects in middle and low income countries. These adverse effects include a moderate negative impact of increases in temperature on agricultural output and for low income countries also negative effects of reductions in precipitation and of increases in the frequency of droughts. The latter two effects are particularly strong in Sub-Sahara Africa where low-tech rain-fed agriculture with very limited climate change adjustment capacities dominates. Thus, our findings reinforce the importance of proper adaptation strategies to climate change considering heterogeneous production technologies across countries.

In this paper we introduce a new source of data to economic history: palynological data or, in other words, information about pollen grains which are preserved in the bottom sediments of various water basins. We discuss how this data is collected and how it should be interpreted; develop new methods for aggregating this information into regional trends in agricultural output; construct an extensive dataset with a large number of pollen sites from Central Europe; and use our methods to study the economic history of Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Bohemia, Brandenburg, and Lower Saxony since the first century AD.

This article examines the distribution of land ownership in the northeastern part of the state of São Paulo, Brazil, the leading coffee export region in the world during the early twentieth century. Based on a detailed agricultural census, we find a widespread presence of small and medium-size farms, with varied degrees of land concentration across subregions and municipalities. Still, large farms and latifundia controlled most of the productive resources in northeast São Paulo, resulting in high levels of inequality when compared to those of other export regions in South and North America.

Price induced increases in land rents trigger an increasing incentive for rent-seeking behavior. To analyse distributional and welfare effects of increasing land rents in developing countries, we develop a game theoretic model where a large and heterogeneous group of farmers competes with a small and wealthy elite. The results indicate that only relatively small rent increases benefit the farmers more than the elite. Moreover, political institutions have an ambiguous effect on farmers’ rent share, and may even reduce overall welfare, because they induce wasteful expenditure on rent-seeking.

This paper addresses the timing of a location's historical transition from rural to urban activity. We test whether urbanization occurs sooner in places with higher agricultural potential and comparatively lower transport costs, using worldwide data that divide the earth's surface at half-degree intervals into 62,290 cells. From an independent estimate of each cell's rural and urban population history over the last 2,000 years, we identify the date at which each cell achieves various thresholds of urbanization. Controlling for unobserved heterogeneity across countries through fixed effects and using a variety of spatial econometric techniques, we find a robust association between earlier urbanization and agro-climatic suitability for cultivation, having seasonal frosts, better access to the ocean or navigable rivers, and lower elevation. These geographic correlations become smaller in magnitude as urbanization proceeds, and there is some variance in effect sizes across continents. Aggregating cells into countries, we show that an earlier urbanization date is associated with higher per capita income today. "Agriculture, Transportation and the Timing of Urbanization: Global Analysis at the Grid Cell Level" has been published in the "Journal of Economic Growth" (DOI 10.1007/s10887-014-9104-x).

This is Part 2 of a two-part paper which surveys the historical evidence on the role of institutions in economic growth. The paper provides a critical scrutiny of a number of stylized facts widely accepted in the growth literature. It shows that private-order institutions have not historically substituted for public-order ones in enabling markets to function; that parliaments representing wealth holders have not invariably been favourable for growth; and that the Glorious Revolution of 1688 did not mark the sudden emergence of either secure property rights or economic growth. Economic history has been used to support both the centrality and the irrelevance of secure property rights to growth, but the reason for this is conceptual vagueness. Secure property rights require much more careful analysis, distinguishing between rights of ownership, use and transfer, and between generalized and particularized variants. Similar careful analysis would, we argue, clarify the growth effects of other institutions, including contract-enforcement mechanisms, guilds, communities, serfdom, and the family. Greater precision concerning institutional effects on growth can be achieved by developing sharper criteria of application for conventional institutional labels, endowing institutions with a scale of intensity or degree, and recognizing that the effects of each institution depend on its relationship with other components of the wider institutional system. Part 2 of the paper examines how institutions are situated in wider institutional systems, explores alternative approaches to explaining institutions, and applies the arguments established in earlier sections to the institution of serfdom. It concludes by drawing the implications of both parts of the paper for institutions and economic growth in historical perspective.

This research establishes that migratory distance from the cradle of anatomically modern humans in East Africa and its effect on the distribution of genetic diversity across countries has a hump-shaped effect on nighttime light intensity per capita as observed by satellites, reflecting the trade-off between the beneficial and the detrimental effects of diversity on productivity. The finding lends further credence to the hypothesis that a significant portion of the variation in the standard of living across the globe can be attributed to factors that were determined in the distant past.

The increased concerns about climate change have made renewable energy sources an important topic of research. Several scholars have applied different methodologies to examine the relationships between energy consumption and economic growth of individual and groups of countries and to analyze the environmental effects of energy policies. Previous studies have analyzed carbon emission savings, using renewable energy usage as an individual source or in combination with traditional sources of energy (e.g., hybrid plants) in connection with lifecycle analysis methods. It is shown that after a certain period, economic growth leads to the promotion of environmental quality. However, econometric modelling critiques have opposed the results of these studies. One reason is that the effectiveness of governance-related parameters has previously been neglected. In this research, we analyze the impact of renewable energy development on carbon emission reduction. We estimate a model to evaluate the effectiveness of renewable energy development, technological innovation, and market regulations in carbon emission reduction. The empirical results are based on a panel data estimation using the EU-15 countries data observed from 1995 to 2010. The elasticities of CO2 emissions are estimated, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of each parameter. The findings show that the effects of a negative climate change could be mitigated by governance-related parameters instead of economic development.

Fundamental research of the coffee economy have shown that regional class alliances were established imprecisely in the territories, usually in the central mountains of Colombia (although not exclusively or only way) and organized by the State being a necessary response to the inevitable need to defend certain values as embodied and structured regional coherence. Partnerships proposals actively promoted favorable conditions.

We investigate how the colonial strategy through the settlement decision affected French trade patterns. In this regard, we construct a new database relying on various primary historical sources containing information on the value of French sectoral trade between 1880 and 1913. Our results show that French colonies with more European settlements traded more with France, whereas the opposite is true for other colonies. We also investigate two channels through which European settlements might have affected the French trade pattern with colonies: institutions and networking. We find that better institutions brought by European settlements had a negative impact on trade with French colonies, while it promoted trade with British colonies. These results are consistent with the extractive nature of French trade relations with its colonies. As for networking, it increases overall French trade within French colonies but reduces it in other colonies.

This is Part 1 of a two-part paper which surveys the historical evidence on the role of institutions in economic growth. The paper provides a critical scrutiny of a number of stylized facts widely accepted in the growth literature. It shows that private-order institutions have not historically substituted for public-order ones in enabling markets to function; that parliaments representing wealth holders have not invariably been favourable for growth; and that the Glorious Revolution of 1688 did not mark the sudden emergence of either secure property rights or economic growth. Economic history has been used to support both the centrality and the irrelevance of secure property rights to growth, but the reason for this is conceptual vagueness. Secure property rights require much more careful analysis, distinguishing between rights of ownership, use and transfer, and between generalized and particularized variants. Similar careful analysis would, we argue, clarify the growth effects of other institutions, including contract-enforcement mechanisms, guilds, communities, serfdom, and the family. Greater precision concerning institutional effects on growth can be achieved by developing sharper criteria of application for conventional institutional labels, endowing institutions with a scale of intensity or degree, and recognizing that the effects of each institution depend on its relationship with other components of the wider institutional system. Part 1 of the paper discusses public-order institutions, parliaments, the distinction between generalized and particularized institutions, and property rights.

This paper sets out a simple spatial model of energy exploitation to ask how the location and productivity of energy resources may affect the distribution of economic activity around the globe. We combine elements from resource and energy economics into one framework linking the spatial productivity of energy resources (both renewable and non-renewable) to the incentives for economic activity to concentrate. Our theory provides a novel scaling law; a magnification effect; and reveals a complementarity between infrastructure investment and spatially productive energy resources. Our empirical work provides estimates of key magnitudes and reviews empirical work supporting our approach.

This paper examines the dynamic effects of demand and supply shocks on mineral commodity prices. It provides empirical insights by using annual data for the copper, lead, tin, and zinc markets from 1840 to 2010. I identify structural shocks by using long-run restrictions and compare these shocks to narrative historical evidence about the respective markets. Long-term price fluctuations are mainly driven by persistent demand shocks. Supply shocks exhibit some importance in the tin and copper markets due to oligopolistic market structures. World output- driven demand shocks have persistent, positive effects on mineral production. Long-term linear trends are statistically insignificant or significantly negative for the examined commodity prices. My results suggest that the current price boom is temporary but not permanent. Commodity exporting countries should prepare for a downswing of prices, while commodity importing countries should not fear for the security of supply of these widely used mineral commodities.