TY - JOUR AU - Acemoglu,Daron AU - Johnson,Simon AU - Robinson,James A. TI - The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 7771 PY - 2000 Y2 - June 2000 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7771 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7771.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 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 - We exploit differences in the mortality rates faced by European colonialists to estimate the effect of institutions on economic performance. Our argument is that Europeans adopted very different colonization policies in different colonies, with different associated institutions. The choice of colonization strategy was, at least in part, determined by whether Europeans could settle in the colony. In places where Europeans faced high mortality rates, they could not settle and they were more likely to set up worse (extractive) institutions. These early institutions persisted to the present. We document evidence supporting these hypotheses. Exploiting differences in mortality rates faced by soldiers, bishops and sailors in the colonies in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries as an instrument for current institutions, we estimate large effects of institutions on income per capita. Our estimates imply that differences in institutions explain approximately three-quarters of the income per capita differences across former colonies. Once we control for the effect of institutions, we find that countries in Africa or those farther away from the equator do not have lower incomes. ER -