Research

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." William Faulkner. Requiem for a Nun.


         Featured in VOX, the World Bank, IADB, Growth Economics, Economic Principals and Nada es Gratis blogs, the Washington Post, La Nacion, La Mañana and El Espectador newspapers, Nature, America, Pesquisa magazines and Javeriana Estereo, part of the QJE Religion and Economics Collection. 

This article examines the long-term consequences of a historical human capital intervention. The Jesuit order founded religious missions in 1609 among the Guarani, in modern-day Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. Before their expulsion in 1767, missionaries instructed indigenous inhabitants in reading, writing, and various crafts. Using archival records, as well as data at the individual and municipal level, I show that in areas of former Jesuit presence—within the Guarani area—educational attainment was higher and remains so (by 10%-15%) 250 years later. These educational differences have also translated into incomes that are 10% higher today. The identification of the positive effect of the Guarani Jesuit missions emerges after comparing them with abandoned Jesuit missions and neighboring Franciscan Guarani missions. The enduring effects observed are consistent with transmission mechanisms of structural transformation, occupational specialization, and technology adoption in agriculture.

 World Bank Policy Research Working Paper | Documento CEDE | IZA Discussion Paper | CEPR WP Featured in VOX and the LSE blogs and Penn's Exchange podcast

This paper offers the first systematic historical evidence on the role of a central actor in modern growth theory-the engineer. It collects cross-country and state level data on the labor share of engineers for the Americas, and county level data on engineering and patenting for the U.S. during the Second Industrial Revolution. These are robustly correlated with income today after controlling for literacy, other types of higher order human capital (e.g. lawyers, physicians) and demand side factors, as well as after instrumenting engineering using the 1862 Land Grant Colleges program. A one standard deviation increase in engineers in 1880 accounts for 10% higher US county incomes today, while patenting capacity contributes another 10%. To document the mechanisms through which engineering density works, we show how it supported technology adoption and structural transformation across intermediate time periods, and is strongly correlated with numerous measures of the knowledge economy today.

World Bank Policy Research Working Paper | Documento CEDE | Featured in VOX, the World Bank, World Economic Forum, LSE, FUNCAS and Nada es Gratis blogs

Using subnational historical data, this paper establishes the within country persistence of economic activity in the New World over the last half millennium, a period including the trauma of the European colonization, the decimation of the native populations, and the imposition of potentially growth inhibiting institutions. We construct a data set incorporating measures of pre-colonial population density, new measures of present regional per capita income and population, and a comprehensive set of locational fundamentals. These fundamentals are shown to have explanatory power: native populations throughout the hemisphere were found in more livable and productive places. We then show that high pre-colonial density areas tend to be dense today: population agglomerations persist. The data and historical evidence suggest this is due partly to locational fundamentals, but also to classic agglomeration effects: colonialists established settlements near existing native populations for reasons of labor, trade, knowledge and defense. The paper then shows that high density historically prosperous) areas also tend to have higher incomes today, and largely due to agglomeration e.ects: fortune persists for the United States and most of Latin America.

CEPR |  BREAD Working Paper | Featured in VOX | Recognized at the BCDE 2020

Skewed sex ratios often result from conflict, disease, and migration, yet their long term impact remains less understood. The War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) in South America killed up to 70% of the Paraguayan male population. According to Paraguayan national lore, the skewed sex ratios resulting from the conflict are the cause of present-day low marriage rates, high rates of out-of-wedlock births and a generally male chauvinist culture. We collate historical and modern data to test this conventional wisdom in the short and the long run. We examine both cross-border and within-country variation in child-rearing, education and labor force participation in Paraguay over a 150 year period. We find that more skewed post-war sex ratios are associated with higher out-of-wedlock births, more female-headed households, and better female educational outcomes, even after the first returned to normal. Cross-country comparisons suggest that Paraguayan women are less likely to be employed than those in neighboring districts in Argentina and Brazil, but that within Paraguay, they are more likely to be employed where the sex ratio shock was more severe. The impacts of the war persist into the present, and are seemingly unaffected by variation in economic openness, uncertainty, or traditional norms.

CEPR Discussion | VOXEU Interview

This survey article reviews the literature on the multifaceted consequences of historical conflict. We revisit three key topics, which are especially relevant for the current Ukrainian context. 1) The negative long-term impact of bombing campaigns and political repression against civilians. 2) The interplay between forced migration, refugees and conflict. 3) The role of gender and war, with a special focus on sex ratios and conflict-related sexual violence. We conclude with an empirical investigation of the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict, including historical determinants such as ethnic populations, historical political repression and voting outcomes.

CEPR |  ECONtribute Working Paper

In this paper we analyze newly available, globally representative data on preferences and world religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Judaism). We find that individuals who report believing in such religions also exhibit more prosocial preferences, as measured by their levels of positive reciprocity, altruism and trust. We further document heterogeneous patterns of negative reciprocity and punishment across world religions. The association between religion and prosocial preferences is stronger in more populous societies and weaker in countries with better institutions. The interactive results between these variables point towards a substitution effect between religious and secular institutions, when it comes to prosocial preferences.

CEPR Working Paper | CEPR Research Brief | Featured in VOX  | VoxTalks | VSE News | A Correction Podcast, the CGD Blog and the OEHW 

As part of its Cold War counterinsurgency operations in Southeast Asia, the U.S. government conducted a "Secret War" in Laos from 1964-1973. This war constituted one of the most intensive bombing campaigns in human history. As a result, Laos is now severely contaminated with UXO (Unexploded Ordnance) and remains one of the poorest countries in the world. In this paper we document the negative long-term impact of conflict on economic development, using highly disaggregated and newly available data on bombing campaigns, satellite imagery and development outcomes. We find a negative, significant and economically meaningful impact of bombings on nighttime lights, expenditures and poverty rates. Almost 50 years after the conflict officially ended, bombed regions are poorer today and are growing at slower rates than unbombed areas. A one standard deviation increase in the total pounds of bombs dropped is associated with a 9.3% fall in GDP per capita. To deal with the potential endogeneity of bombing, we use as instruments the distance to the Vietnamese Ho Chi Minh Trail as well as US military airbases outside Laos. Using census data at the village and individual levels, we show the deleterious impact of UXOs in terms of health, as well as education, structural transformation and rural-urban migration.

CEPR Working Paper | Featured in Nada es Gratis, VOX, Foco Económico,  Conversación sobre la Historia, Derecho Mercantil and Almacén de Derecho blogs and Catalunya Radio 

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) was one of the most devastating conflicts of the twentieth century, yet little is known about its long-term legacy. We show that the war had a long-lasting effect on social capital, voting behavior and collective memory. To this end we use geo-located data on historical mass graves, disaggregated modern-day survey data on trust, combined with modern electoral results. For econometric identification, we exploit deviations from the initial military plans of attack, using the historical (1931) highway network. We also employ a geographical Regression Discontinuity Design along the Aragon Front. Our results show a significant, negative and sizable relationship between political violence and generalized trust. We further scrutinize the trust results, finding negative effects of conflict on trust in institutions associated with the Civil War, but no effects when looking at trust on Post 1975 democratic institutions. We also find long-lasting results on voting during the Democratic Period (1977-2016), corresponding to the sided political repression implemented in the Aragon region. In terms of mechanisms—using a specialized survey on the Civil War, street names data and Francoist newsreels about the war—we find lower levels of political engagement and differential patterns of collective memory about this traumatic historical event.

Featured in The Marginal Revolution, El Pais, Folha, Estado, Nexo Jornal, Urban Demographics and Il Sole 24 Ore


This article documents the long-term impact of slavery on inequality at the receiving end. We focus on Brazil, the largest receiver of African slaves and the last country to abolish this institution in the Western Hemisphere, in 1888. To deal with the endogeneity of slavery placement, we use a spatial Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD), exploiting the Tordesillas Treaty, which established the colonial boundaries between the Portuguese and Spanish empires within Brazil. We find that the number of slaves in 1872 is discontinuously higher on the Portuguese side of the border, consistent with this power's comparative advantage in transatlantic slavery. We then show how this differential slave rate led to higher modern income inequality of 0.04 points (of the Gini Index), close to 10% of the average income inequality in the country. In terms of mechanisms, we find a wider income gap, and important differences in education, employment and prejudice for blacks in modern times. We rule out the role of colonizer identity and other mechanisms proposed in the historical literature.

We study the impact of a large-scale administrative reform on state capacity in the Spanish colonies in the Americas. During the late 18th century, the Spanish Crown overhauled the provincial colonial government, introducing a new corps of Intendants to replace the existing body of Corregidores. These Intendants were carefully selected, well remunerated, and endowed with fiscal, legal, and executive powers. Our empirical strategy leverages the staggered adoption of this reform across different parts of the empire, extending from modern-day Mexico to Argentina, yielding three main findings. First, using granular administrative data from the network of royal treasuries, we show that the reform led to a sizable increase in Crown revenue of around 30%. Second, the reform also led to a reduction in the incidence of acts of insurrection by the indigenous population, which the corregidores had exploited before. However, the reform also heightened tensions with the local creole elites--as reflected by naming patterns--which potentially contributed to independence.

    Selected Research in Progress

Book

This book brings together world-renowned experts and rising scholars to provide a collection of chapters examining the long-term impact of historical events on modern-day economic and political developments in Latin America. It, uses a novel approach, stressing empirical contributions and state-of-the-art empirical methods for causal identification. Contributing authors apply these cutting-edge tools to their topics of expertise, giving readers a compendium of frontier research in the region. Important questions of colonialism, migration, elites, land tenure, corruption, and conflict are examined and discussed in an approachable style. The book features a conclusion from Alberto Diaz-Cayeros, Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Stanford University. 

This book is critical reader for scholars and students of economic history, political science, political economy, development studies, and Latin American, and Caribbean studies.

Book Chapters