The Fractured-Land Hypothesis / Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, Mark Koyama, Youhong Lin, Tuan-Hwee Sng.

By:

Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús

Contributor(s):

Material type: Text

TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w27774.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2020.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

Online resources:

Available additional physical forms:

Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers

Abstract: Patterns of political unification and fragmentation have crucial implications for comparative economic development. Diamond (1997) famously argued that "fractured land" was responsible for China's tendency toward political unification and Europe's protracted political fragmentation. We build a dynamic model with granular geographical information in terms of topographical features and the location of productive agricultural land to quantitatively gauge the effects of "fractured land" on state formation in Eurasia. We find that either topography or productive land alone is sufficient to account for China's recurring political unification and Europe's persistent political fragmentation. The existence of a core region of high land productivity in Northern China plays a central role in our simulations. We discuss how our results map into observed historical outcomes and assess how robust our findings are.

Tags from this library: No tags from this library for this title. Log in to add tags.

Average rating: 0.0 (0 votes)

Holdings
Item type	Home library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Working Paper	Biblioteca Digital	Colección NBER	nber w27774 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Not For Loan

Total holds: 0

Collection: Colección NBER Close shelf browser (Hides shelf browser)

Previous	No cover image available	No cover image available	No cover image available	No cover image available	No cover image available	No cover image available	No cover image available	Next
Previous	nber w27771 How to Estimate a VAR after March 2020 /	nber w27772 Winners and Losers from Sovereign Debt Inflows /	nber w27773 The Long-Term Distributional and Welfare Effects of Covid-19 School Closures /	nber w27774 The Fractured-Land Hypothesis /	nber w27775 Perinatal Health among 1 Million Chinese-Americans /	nber w27776 Rugged Individualism and Collective (In)action During the COVID-19 Pandemic /	nber w27777 Tracing the Linkages Between Scientific Research and Energy Innovations: A Comparison of Clean and Dirty Technologies /	Next

September 2020.

Patterns of political unification and fragmentation have crucial implications for comparative economic development. Diamond (1997) famously argued that "fractured land" was responsible for China's tendency toward political unification and Europe's protracted political fragmentation. We build a dynamic model with granular geographical information in terms of topographical features and the location of productive agricultural land to quantitatively gauge the effects of "fractured land" on state formation in Eurasia. We find that either topography or productive land alone is sufficient to account for China's recurring political unification and Europe's persistent political fragmentation. The existence of a core region of high land productivity in Northern China plays a central role in our simulations. We discuss how our results map into observed historical outcomes and assess how robust our findings are.