This chapter surveys the historical evidence on the role of institutions in economic growth
and points out weaknesses in a number of stylized facts widely accepted in the growth …

Why do certain countries display high gender equalities while others display low gender
equalities? To what extent does gender equality foster economic growth and development …

We document a strong positive relationship between natural resource exports and
urbanization in a sample of 116 developing nations over the period 1960–2010. In countries …

This book has its origin in a network on energy history, the LEG network (Long-term Energy
and Growth). This came together in 2003 with the aim of providing standardized and …

For most of the vast span of human history, economic growth was all but nonexistent. Then,
about two centuries ago, some nations began to emerge from this epoch of economic …

We exploit regional variation in suitability for cultivating potatoes, together with time variation
arising from their introduction to the Old World from the Americas, to estimate the impact of …

This paper suggests that inequality in the distribution of landownership adversely affected
the emergence of human-capital promoting institutions (eg public schooling), and thus the …

This paper examines the central hypothesis of the influential Malthusian theory, according to
which improvements in the technological environment during the preindustrial era had …

How good to be a woman, how much better to be a man! Maidens and wenches, remember
the lesson you're about to hear Don't hurtle yourself into marriage far too soon. The saying …

How did Europe escape the “Iron Law of Wages?” We construct a simple Malthusian model
with two sectors and multiple steady states, and use it to explain why European per capita …