"The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development" is a 2001 article written by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson and published in American Economic Review. It is considered a seminal contribution to development economics through its use of European settler mortality as an instrumental variable of institutional development in former colonies. The theory proposed in the article is that Europeans only set up growth-inducing institutions in areas where the disease environment was favourable so that they could settle. In areas with unfavourable disease environments to Europeans, such as central Africa, they instead set up extractive institutions which persist to the present day and explain much of the variation in income across countries. Other theories explored in the article argue that it is the choices of institutions within the country that result in the effective and efficient use of resources in leading to the successful development of that country. Important issues with the data and analysis have been identified, causing some doubt as to the accuracy of these results.The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation: Comment, David Y. Albouy, American Economic Review, vol. 102, no. 6, October 2012, pp. 3059-76. DOI: 10.1257/aer.102.6.3059
The trio of authors have won the 2024 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Summary The first question the authors ask is simple: "What are the fundamental causes of the large differences in income per capita across countries?". Although the authors are aware of the fact that no consensus has been reached on this question, they suggest that institutions might have something to do with this problem.
In this paper, they offer a theory of variation in institutions among former colonies of European countries impacting the economic performance of a country, based on three premises:
1. Extractive states were set up in colonies in order to extract as many resources as possible which were then transferred to the colonizer. Consequently, these extractive states did not perform well economically as there were no proper institutions set in place to govern the state. This lack of institutions meant that there were no checks and balances on the governing body which then can exert its power without oversight. On the other hand, states where proper institutions were put in place resulted in economic success.
2. The choice of settling at particular geographic locations by the colony also played a part in determining whether an extractive state or colony was set up by the colonizer. In regions where European settlement faced high mortality rates due to disease, the colonizers were likely to create an extractive state as it is difficult to create a sustainable settlement.
3. Another indicator of economic performance is whether colonial institutions still exist after independence has been won. In the scenario where colonial institutions remain, this would allow pre-existing wealth-generating assets to continue to operate in a similar manner.
By the diversity of colonization policies, the authors mean different natures and degrees of various policies, with the presence of European colonisers being an important factor influencing the form of colonialism.
Countries with a significant number of European settlers and policies or rights similar to those of their motherlands are given the name "Neo-Europes" (a name first introduced by historian Alfred Crosby in 1986). In these colonies, established institutions followed the model of their home country. If not, settlers were prepared to impose them by force. Their argument was that they were still citizens of their native country and thus had the right to be treated similarly to their homelands. This was the case of Australia in the 1840s, where most settlers were former criminals, whereas landowners were mostly former jailors, which led to pressure to implement constitutional changes.
On the other side, states with little protection of property rights and expropriation by governments are labelled by the authors as “extractive states”. Especially in Spanish and Portuguese American colonies, the main object was to extract as many metals and other commodities as possible. Similar situations were observable in British West Africa (including the Gold Coast), in the Ivory Coast, and possibly in the most extreme case of Congo Free State.
The feasibility of settlements was mostly related to the presence of various diseases in potential colonies. It is documented that this factor was of great importance, as it was, for example, in the case of the Pilgrims. When choosing their destination, they decided to migrate to the Thirteen Colonies which became the United States, and not to another British colony, British Guiana, because of lower mortality in the United States. When deciding where to send criminals, several locations were rejected due to high mortality rates and Australia was chosen as the final destination for convicts. The mortality rate was also one of the significant factors influencing the development of new settlements – a higher probability of survival was more attractive to potential new colonists.
The persistence of institutions works with the concept that institutions introduced by colonizers prevailed in countries even after the natives declared independence from their colonizers. There are several possibilities; the authors of this paper offer three of them. Firstly, introducing new institutions is costly. Elites may prefer to keep functioning institutions instead of introducing new, more expensive ones. Secondly, the smaller the ruling elite, and the bigger the gains from extractive strategy, the bigger the incentives to keep running institutions. Thirdly, agents who irreversibly invested (directly or indirectly) in institutions might be more willing to keep those institutions.
The authors exploit these three premises as a base to use the mortality of European colonists as an instrument for present institutions in those countries. Their hypothesis is the following: mortality rate of settlers influenced settlements, settlements affected early institutions, and those, in turn, created the foundation of current institutions.
In one sample of 75 former European colonies, a strongly negative relationship was found between current GDP per capita and mortality rate per thousand of former settlers in these countries (from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century). The authors claim that the lethality of colonists in the past explains more than 25% of the variation in institutions in the present, adding that the mortality of colonists has no impact on current GDP per capita in those countries but the ones caused by institutional development.
An important note is their exclusion of correlations between disease environment and current economic performance. There may be a tendency to connect the lethality of settlers to the occurrence of illnesses (which is not wrong), however, it is important to bear in mind that the difference in immune strength between colonists and local inhabitants, who had been exposed to local diseases for centuries, differs, and thus it is very unlikely that economic performance of former European colonies is determined by disease occurrence. The authors illustrate contrasts between the immunities of local people and settlers an example of troops in British India. Units in this colony consisted of soldiers recruited locally as well as of soldiers who arrived with their units from the British Isles. According to Curtin, 1968, who is cited by the authors, the mortality rate of British soldiers in Britain and local conscripts serving in the British Army in India was approximately the same. However, the lethality among British soldiers in India was 7–10 times higher than the lethality of local Indian soldiers.
The authors also observe that outliers do not change the result. Excluding developed countries such as Australia or New Zealand has no effect, nor does excluding African countries. Another important observation is that estimates barely changed when controls for other variables such as main colonizer, religion, legal origin or culture were included.
The authors also point out that they know about other scholars dealing with the mortality of colonizers and institutions, but they consider their approach as new since no scholar before had examined the relationship between mortality, settlements and institutions specifically. Another innovation in this work consists in looking at the above-mentioned factors regardless of the nationality of colonizers. Many economists (e.g. von Hayek, La Porta, Landes, among others) studied the importance of colonial origins, but these works were mostly focused on differences in the nationality of settlers who colonized countries (mostly investigating differences between British colonies and colonies of the French Empire or Spanish Empire, since these countries were the biggest colonizers at the time). However, this study is centered exclusively on conditions in the colonies, disregarding the origin of the settlers.
The final result the authors examine was that there is a high correlation between mortality rates and settlements, between settlements and early institutions, and between early and current institutions. They also point out that institutions and economic performance are not predestined and thus are open to change (as in the case of Republic of Korea in the 1960s). The authors also admit that there are still many questions not been answered and are subject to further studies.
Criticism A replication of the study was published in the same journal eleven years later by David Y. Albouy in the article 'The Colonial Origins Of Comparative Development: An Investigation Of The Settler Mortality Data' who argued that the mortality rates for 28 countries used in the sample by the authors are from within the country themselves; yet, there are also another 36 countries within the same sample size in which their mortality rates are judgmentally determined by the authors based on similar disease environments to the 28 nations, resulting in inaccurate assumptions. Albouy argues that this sample selection of affixing mortality rate to a country based on data from the neighboring country is dubious since the authors did not provide a robust explanation in determining how the two countries have similar disease environments. Albouy explains that there is inconsistency within the authors' treatment of mortality rates given that the authors assign certain rates to neighboring countries but then determine the same mortality rate across other neighboring countries. Albouy further highlights that the sample selection was questionable given how countries were selected as samples based on the author's confusion over former names of African countries and the poor use of unreliable mortality data. The original authors dismissed Albouy's criticism in their subsequent reply with the article 'The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation: Reply'.Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson. 2012. "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation: Reply." American Economic Review, 102 (6): 3077-3110. DOI: 10.1257/aer.102.6.3077
Another criticism is that human capital, not institutions, is the more basic driver of economic growth. Glaeser (et al.), using the same settler mortality instrument for human capital, found that human capital performs better econometrically than institutional quality. Institutions thrive when there is a high level of human and social capital as this is the proponent that drives the modus operandi of institutions and the production of an economy. This is different to what has been proposed by the authors since institutions evidently seem not to have a large impact on economic growth.