Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-2020
Department
Economics
Abstract
How does the historical legacy of agriculture affect democratic traditions in contemporary societies? This paper provides empirical evidence that inherent crop yield and democracy exhibit an inverted U-shaped relationship. This finding is supported by cross-country data from up to 147 countries, 186 pre-colonial societies, and the U.S. states. The relationship thus exhibits a highly persistent pattern. Crop yield is measured by kilocalories per hectare per year under rain-fed conditions, which has the advantage of being highly exogenous. The hump-shaped relationship holds up to a battery of robustness tests.
Original Publication Information
Ang, James B., Per G. Fredriksson and Satyendra Kumar Gupta. "Crop Yield and Democracy." 2020 Land Economics 96(2): 265-290.
http://le.uwpress.org/content/96/2/265.full.pdf
ThinkIR Citation
Ang, James B.; Fredriksson, Per G.; and Gupta, Satyendra Kumar, "Crop Yield and Democracy" (2020). Faculty Scholarship. 519.
https://ir.library.louisville.edu/faculty/519
DOI
10.3368/le.96.2.265
ORCID
0000-0002-5673-0155
Comments
This article was originally published in Land Economics volume 96, issue 2 in May 2020.