Colonial origins of comparative development


"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 environment 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, it is claimed.

Resume of the article

The first question 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 in this question, they suggest that institutions might have something to do with this problem.
In this paper, they offer theory of variation in institutions among former colonies of European countries, based on 3 premises: different types of European colonial policies, feasibility of settlements and persistence of those institutions.
By diversity of colonization policies, the authors mean different nature and degree of various policies, with the presence of European colonisers being important factor influencing colonialism form.
Countries with significant number of European settlers and policies or rights similar to those of their mother lands are given tag “Neo-Europes”. In these colonies, established institutions followed the model of their home country. If not so, settlers were prepared to enforce them by force. Their argument was that they were still citizens of their native country and thus have right to be treated as in homeland. This was the case of Australia in 1840s, where most of settlers were former criminals, whereas landowners were mostly former jailors, which led to pressure to constitutional changes.  
On the other side, states with little protection of property rights and expropriation by government are labelled by the authors as “extractive states”. Especially in Spanish and Portuguese American colonies, the main object was to extract as much metals and other commodities as possible. Similar situation was observable in West African British colonies, in the Ivory Coast and Gold Coast and possibly the most extreme case was Belgian Congo.
Feasibility of settlements were mostly related to presence of various diseases in potential colonies. It is documented that this factor was of a great importance, as it was for example in case of the Pilgrim fathers. When choosing their destination, they decided to migrate to was to became the United States and not to another British colony, Guyana, 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 of convicts. Mortality rate was also one of the significant factors influencing the development of new settlements – higher probability to survive was more attractive to potential new colonists.      
Persistence of institutions works with concept that institutions introduced by colonists prevailed in countries even after they declared independence from their colonizers. There are several possibilities, the authors of this paper offer three of them. Firstly, introducing of new institutions is costly. Elites may prefer to keep functioning institutions instead of introducing new, costly ones. Secondly, the smaller ruling elite, the higher gain from extractive strategy, the bigger incentive to keep running institutions. Thirdly, agents who irreversibly invested in institutions might be more willing to keep those institutions.  
These 3 premises authors exploit as a base to use mortality of European colonists as instrument for present institutions in those countries. Their hypothesis is following: mortality rate of settlers influenced settlements, settlements affected early institutions and those in turn created the ground of current institutions.
On sample of 75 former European colonies, they find strong negative relationship between current GDP per capita and mortality rate per thousand of former settlers in these countries. The authors claim that lethality of colonists in the past explains more than 25% of variety in institutions in the present, adding that mortality of colonists has no impact on current GDP per capita in those countries but the one caused by institutional development.
Important thing worth mentioning is also exclusion of correlation between disease environment and current economic performance. There might be a tendency to connect lethality of settlers to the occurrence of illnesses, however, it is important to bear in mind that immune system of 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. Authors illustrate contrast between immunities of local people and settlers on 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, mortality rate of British soldiers in Britain and local conscripts serving in British Army in India was approximately the same. However, the lethality among British soldiers in India was 7-10 times higher than 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 has 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 mortality of colonizers and institutions, but they consider their approach as new, since nobody before had examined specifically the relationship between mortality, settlements and institutions. Another innovation in this work consists in looking at the above mentioned factors regardless of nationality of colonizers. Many economists studied the importance of colonial origins, but these works were mostly focused on differences based on nationality of settlers who colonised countries. However, this study is centred exclusively on conditions in the colonies, disregarding the origin of the settlers.               
The final result authors examine was that there is 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 possible to be changed. Authors also admit that there are still many question not answered and are subject to further studies.