History, institutions and economic performance : the legacy of colonial land tenure systems in India

By Abhijit Banerjee, Lakshmi Shankar Iyer. 2005

1,379 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We analyze the colonial land revenue institutions set up by the British in India, and show that differences in historical property rights institutions lead to sustained differences in economic outcomes. Areas in which proprietary rights in land were historically given to landlords have significantly lower agricultural investments and productivity in the post-independence period than areas in which these rights were given to the cultivators. These areas also have significantly lower investments in health and education. These differences are not driven by omitted variables or endogeneity problems; they probably arise because differences in historical institutions lead to very different policy choices.

Subfields: Demography, Economics and Econometrics, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f7c8b39263efe60a1fa98e372a59e3d0b882a6d6

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Citations in the corpus

Explaining Causal Findings Without Bias: Detecting and Assessing Direct Effects (2016, background): “Finally, we note that Alesina, Giuliano, and Nunn (2013) is part of a broader recent trend in social science exploring the long-term impact of historical institutions on contemporary factors (Banerjee and Iyer 2005; Dell 2010; Nunn and Wantchekon 2011; Acharya, Blackwell, and Sen n.d.).”
The Mission: Human Capital Transmission, Economic Persistence, and Culture in South America* (2018, background): “For recent evidence comparing the thrift of these Catholic orders, see Barnebeck Andersen et al. (2013) for the Cistercian order in England and Akcomak et al.”
Traditional Institutions Meet the Modern World: Caste, Gender, and Schooling Choice in a Globalizing Economy (2006, background): “For example, Fafchamps (2002) and Banerjee and Munshi (2003) show how network segmentation along community lines could impose significant efficiency costs with respect to investment by traders in Africa and small manufacturing units in South India respectively.”
Pre-colonial Ethnic Institutions and Contemporary African Development (2012, background): “Nunn (2008) stresses the importance of the slave trades, while Huillery (2009), Berger (2009) and Arbesu (2011) quantify the long-run effects of colonial investments and tax collection systems.”
The erosion of colonial trade linkages after independence (2010, background): “Banerjee and Iyer (2005) find that 50 years after India abolished land revenue systems that the British imposed in themid-19th century, their“institutional overhang”manifests itself in agricultural productivity differences.”
Human Capital and Regional Development (2013, background): “…but combine it with coefficient estimates from productivity 3 A recent literature looks at colonial history within countries, and argues that regions that were treated particularly badly by colonizers have poor institutions and lower income many years later (Banerjee and Iyer 2005, Dell 2010).”
State Capacity and Long-Run Economic Performance (2016, positive): “Our paper relates to the literature that tests the long-run relationships between historical institutional factors and economic performance, including Engerman and Sokoloff (1997), La Porta et al. (1998), Hall and Jones (1999), Acemoglu et al. (2001, 2002, 2005), and Banerjee and Iyer (2005).”
The Meaning of Failed Replications: A Review and Proposal (2015, background): “…Different indep. variable, specification Égert (2013) Reinhart and Rogoff (2010) Alternative debt measures, specifications Iversen et al. (2013) Banerjee and Iyer (2005) Different data set by recoding key regressor Martel Garcı́a (2014) Ross (2006) Recoding regressor of interest, arguably…”
Institutional infrastructure and economic growth in member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) (2015, background): “…shows that having well-functioning of broad institutions is fundamental to achieving economic growth (see, inter alia, Acemoglu et al., 2001; Banerjee and Iyer, 2005; Carlsson and Lundstrom, 2002; Dawson, 1998, 2003; De Haan et al., 2006; Doucouliagos and Ulubasoglu, 2006; Fedderke, 2001;…”