TY  - JOUR
AU  - Nunn,Nathan
AU  - Qian,Nancy
TI  - The Potato's Contribution to Population and Urbanization: Evidence from an Historical Experiment
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15157
PY  - 2009
Y2  - July 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15157
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15157.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Nathan Nunn
Department of Economics
Harvard University
1805 Cambridge St
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/496-4958
Fax: 617/495-8570
E-Mail: nnunn@fas.harvard.edu

Nancy Qian
Department of Economics
Yale University
27 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06520-8269
E-Mail: nancy.qian@yale.edu
AB  - We exploit regional variation in suitability for cultivating potatoes, together with time variation arising from their introduction to the Old World from the Americas, to estimate the impact of potatoes on Old World population and urbanization. Our results show that the introduction of the potato was responsible for a significant portion of the increase in population and urbanization observed during the 18th and 19th centuries.
ER  -