The 2024 Nobel prize for economics was awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson for their work on demonstrating the relationship between pre-colonial conditions and current levels of development.
The conditions considered are of two types, firstly those related to habitability by European measured by settler mortality (Figure 3, Nobel report) and further by malaria and yellow fever incidence, and temperature and humidity conditions (Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2001). Secondly those related to prior development such as urbanisation in 1500 and population density in 1500 (Figure 1, Nobel report). With regard the latter, this is described as a systematic reversal of fortune, in that those that were more developed prior to colonisation ended up less developed today and having less inclusive political institutions.
From the Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2001 paper it appears this is limited to the colonies of the British, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Belgian, Dutch, and Portuguese.
If we consider how this applies to the colonies of the Russian empire and the Soviet Union the variation in settler mortality seems less pronounced, but the variation in prior development is very much present with the western countries such as the baltic states having high levels of prior development and the central asian states having much lower levels. In these cases the reversal of fortune appears not to have occured, with the baltic states still being richer than than the central asian states and having more inclusive political institutions.
However this is based purely on my very limited understanding of past and present conditions. Has this analysis been done rigorously in the manner of the papers linked by the Nobel committee?
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