TY - JOUR AU - Acemoglu,Daron AU - Cantoni,Davide AU - Johnson,Simon AU - Robinson,James A. TI - The Consequences of Radical Reform: The French Revolution JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 14831 PY - 2009 Y2 - April 2009 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14831 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14831.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Daron Acemoglu Department of Economics MIT, E52-380B 50 Memorial Drive Cambridge, MA 02142-1347 Tel: 617/253-1927 Fax: 617/253-1330 E-Mail: daron@mit.edu Davide Cantoni Seminar für Wirtschaftsgeschichte University of Munich 80539 Munich Germany E-Mail: cantoni@lmu.de Simon Johnson MIT Sloan School of Management 100 Main Street, E52-562 Cambridge, MA 02142 Tel: 617/290-9618 Fax: 617/253-2660 E-Mail: sjohnson@mit.edu James A. Robinson Harvard University Department of Government N309, 1737 Cambridge Street Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel: 617/496-2839 Fax: 617/495-0438 E-Mail: jrobinson@gov.harvard.edu AB - The French Revolution of 1789 had a momentous impact on neighboring countries. The French Revolutionary armies during the 1790s and later under Napoleon invaded and controlled large parts of Europe. Together with invasion came various radical institutional changes. French invasion removed the legal and economic barriers that had protected the nobility, clergy, guilds, and urban oligarchies and established the principle of equality before the law. The evidence suggests that areas that were occupied by the French and that underwent radical institutional reform experienced more rapid urbanization and economic growth, especially after 1850. There is no evidence of a negative effect of French invasion. Our interpretation is that the Revolution destroyed (the institutional underpinnings of) the power of oligarchies and elites opposed to economic change; combined with the arrival of new economic and industrial opportunities in the second half of the 19th century, this helped pave the way for future economic growth. The evidence does not provide any support for several other views, most notably, that evolved institutions are inherently superior to those 'designed'; that institutions must be 'appropriate' and cannot be 'transplanted'; and that the civil code and other French institutions have adverse economic effects. ER -