The Productivity of US States since 1880

By K. Mitchener, I. Mclean. 2003

116 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study uses state-level variation in labor productivity levels at twenty-year intervals between 1880 and 1980 to examine the relative importance of institutional and geographical influences in explaining observed and persistent differences in standards of living over time and across regions. Focusing on fundamental rather than proximate influences, we find that both institutional characteristics and some physical geography characteristics account for a high proportion of the differences in state productivity levels: states with navigable waterways, a large minerals endowment, and no slaves in 1860, on average, had higher labor productivity levels throughout the sample period. However, we find little support for two other influences that have previously received attention—climate and latitude.

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Citations in the corpus

• Domestic Institutions as a Source of Comparative Advantage (2013, unknown): “On a closely related point, Mitchener and McLean (2003) show that the parts of the United States that relied heavily on slave labor in 1860, subsequently had lower levels of labor productivity in manufacturing.”
• The Robust Relationship between Taxes and U.S. State Income Growth (2008, background): “…Wheat (1995); Crain and Lee (1999); Caselli and Coleman (2001); Stansel (2005) Clark and Murphy (1996) Holtz–Eakin (1993); Crown and Wheat (1995); Clark and Murphy (1996); Mitchener and McLean (2003) Plaut and Pluta (1983); Mofi di and Stone (1990); Dalenberg and Partridge (1995); Phillips and…”
• Resource abundance and economic growth in the United States (2007, background): “In the past, resource-affluent US regions have witnessed increased immigration, as exemplified by the gold rush experience in California (Mitchener and McLean, 2003).”
• Is a negative correlation between resource abundance and growth sufficient evidence that there is a “resource curse”? (2011, methodology): “While the U.S. states in our data do display variety in the institutional arrangements for extractive industries (e.g., Libecap and Wiggins, 1985) and in general (e.g., Mitchener and McLean, 2003), it is unlikely that market or institutional failure is behind this result.”
• Political Competition, Policy and Growth: Theory and Evidence from the US (2010, background): “See, for example, Arsenault (1984) for a historical account of the spread of air conditioning and Mitchener and McLean (2003) for an assessment of the importance of air conditioning for southern productivity relative to other factors.”
• Good, Bad, and Ugly Colonial Activities: Do They Matter for Economic Development? (2012, background): “…Meisel (2006) for Colombia; Naritomi, Soares, and Assunção (2007) for Brazil; Merrouche (2007) for Algeria; Huillery (2007) for French Africa; Acemoglu et al. (2005) and Tabellini (2007) for Europe; Mitchener and McLean (1999, 2003) and Nunn (2008a) for the United States; and Dell (2010) for Peru.”
• Sequential city growth in the us: does age matter? (2013, unknown): “Other studies, including Rappaport and Sachs (2001), Mitchener and McLean (2003) and Bleakley and Lin (2012), also point out that having access to navigable waters plays an important role in accounting for population distribution and growth.”
• The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas (2010, background): “See for example Mitchener and McLean (2003), Berkowitz and Clay (2005, 2006), Acemoglu, Bautista, Querubin, and Robinson (2008), Dell (2008), and Nunn (2008a), as well as the review by Nunn (2009). the botanical exchange.”
• Lessons from Strange Cases (2008, methodology): “To control for this aspect of factor endowments, we introduce a measure of the percentage of the state population that was enslaved in 1860 (Mitchener & Mclean, 2003).”