Chris Blattman

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States are persistent

We combine information on the spatial distribution of ethnicities before colonization with regional variation in contemporary economic performance, as proxied by satellite images of light density at night. We document a strong association between pre-colonial ethnic political centralization and regional development. This pattern is not driven by differences in local geographic features or by other observable ethnic-specific cultural and economic variables.

A new paper by Stelios Michalopoulos and Elias Papaioannou.

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Why We Fight - Book Cover
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