Democracy, Institutions, and Differential Paths of Economic Growth Among New World Economies: From Settlement to 1940

该研究将研究政治经济学、经济制度和增长之间的关系是如何演变的，并在欧洲人定居以来的新世界经济中表现出来的。对西欧和某些海外分支的现代扩张或经济增长的研究认为，政治民主和经济增长往往是同时出现的。这项研究将试图确定这在北美和南美是否属实。北美和南美的经济遵循着非常不同的经济和政治发展道路，尽管它们都享有人均自然资源方面非常有利的环境，都是由同样的少数国家建立的，都是由来自同一人口的同一经济阶层的个人居住的。尽管在殖民时期有这些相似之处，但它们在政治权力、人力资本和社会财富的不平等程度、经济机构的性质和结构以及实现增长方面存在巨大差异。新世界经济为研究民主、体制和增长提供了一个有吸引力的天然实验室的另一个原因是，它们在政治制度方面经历了一些重大变革，例如实现独立，同时伴随着经济体制的变化（或未能改变）。本研究还将详细研究这些事件对制度变化的影响，并严格应用跨经济体的比较方法，以提高对制度在经济增长中的作用的理解。

Kenneth L. Sokoloff Stanley L. Engerman Stephen H. Haber National Bureau of Economic Research SBR-9515222 The research will study how the relationships between political economy, economic institutions, and growth evolved and were manifested among the economies of the New World since settlement by the Europeans. Studies of modern expansion or economic growth in western Europe and certain overseas offshoots have argued that political democracy and economic growth tended to emerge together. This research will attempt to determine if this is true in North and South America. The economies of North and South America followed very different paths of economic and political development even though all enjoyed extraordinarily favorable environments with respect to natural resources per person, were established by the same small set of countries and were peopled by individuals from the same economic classes of the same populations. Despite these similarities at the time of settlement, they came to differ enormously with respect to the degree of inequality in political power, human capital, and wealth within their societies, the nature and structure of their economic institutions, as well as their realization of growth. Another reason why New World economies provide an attractive natural laboratory for the study of democracy, institutions and growth, is that they experienced a number of major alterations in political regime, like the achievement of independence, with associated changes (or failures to change) in economic institutions. This research will also examine in detail the impacts of changes in institutions due to such events, with a rigorous application of the comparative approach across economies, to improve the understanding of the role of institutions in economic growth.