The Fractured-Land Hypothesis

IF 11.1 1区 经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS Quarterly Journal of Economics Pub Date : 2023-01-09 DOI:10.1093/qje/qjad003
Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, Mark Koyama, Youhong Lin, Tuan-Hwee Sng
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引用次数: 3

Abstract

Abstract Patterns of state formation have crucial implications for comparative economic development. Diamond (1997) famously argued that “fractured land” was responsible for China’s tendency toward political unification and Europe’s protracted polycentrism. We build a dynamic model with granular geographical information in terms of topographical features and the location of productive agricultural land to quantitatively gauge the effects of fractured land on state formation in Eurasia. We find that topography alone is sufficient but not necessary to explain polycentrism in Europe and unification in China. Differences in land productivity, in particular the existence of a core region of high land productivity in northern China, deliver the same result. We discuss how our results map into observed historical outcomes, assess how robust our findings are, and analyze the differences between theory and data in Africa and the Americas.
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断裂土地假说
国家形成模式对比较经济发展具有至关重要的影响。戴蒙德(1997)提出了著名的观点,即“破碎的土地”是中国倾向于政治统一和欧洲旷日持久的多中心主义的原因。我们根据地形特征和生产性农业用地的位置建立了一个包含颗粒地理信息的动态模型,以定量衡量欧亚大陆破碎土地对国家形成的影响。我们发现,对于解释欧洲的多中心主义和中国的统一,地形本身是充分的,但不是必要的。土地生产力的差异,特别是中国北方存在的高土地生产力核心区,提供了同样的结果。我们讨论了我们的结果如何映射到观察到的历史结果,评估了我们的发现的可靠性,并分析了非洲和美洲的理论和数据之间的差异。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
24.20
自引率
2.20%
发文量
42
期刊介绍: The Quarterly Journal of Economics stands as the oldest professional journal of economics in the English language. Published under the editorial guidance of Harvard University's Department of Economics, it comprehensively covers all aspects of the field. Esteemed by professional and academic economists as well as students worldwide, QJE holds unparalleled value in the economic discourse.
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