Browsing by Author "Nunn, Nathan"

Now showing items 1-20 of 26

    • The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas 

      Nunn, Nathan; Qian, Nancy (American Economic Association, 2010)
      This paper provides an overview of the long-term impacts of the Columbian Exchange -- that is, the exchange of diseases, ideas, food crops, technologies, populations, and cultures between the New World and the Old World ...

    • Commercial Imperialism? Political Influence and Trade during the Cold War 

      Berger, Daniel; Easterly, William; Nunn, Nathan; Satyanath, Shanker (American Economic Association, 2013)
      We provide evidence that increased political influence, arising from CIA interventions during the Cold War, was used to create a larger foreign market for American products. Following CIA interventions, imports from the ...

    • The Economics of Fair Trade 

      Dragusanu, Raluca; Giovannucci, Daniele; Nunn, Nathan (American Economic Association, 2014)
      Fair Trade is a labeling initiative aimed at improving the lives of the poor in developing countries by offering better terms to producers and helping them to organize. Whether Fair Trade can achieve its intended goals has ...

    • Essays at the Intersection of Development and Education Economics 

      Bau, Natalie (2015-04-21)
      This dissertation uses tools from economics to study three different aspects of educational markets in the developing world. In chapter 1, I analyze how competition among private schools in Pakistan affects student outcomes ...

    • Essays in Development Economics 

      Lichand, Guilherme Finkelfarb (2016-05-20)
      Chapter 1 studies the effects of fighting corruption on public service delivery. While corruption crackdowns have been shown to effectively reduce missing government expenditures, their effects on public service delivery ...

    • Essays in Economic History and Development 

      Osafo-Kwaako, Philip (2013-03-15)
      Chapter 1 provides a brief overview of the recent literature in economic history and long-run development, and summarizes the main findings of the three essays presented in this dissertation. In Chapter 2, I examine the ...

    • Essays in Labor Economics 

      Cook-Stuntz, Elizabeth Ann (2016-05-19)
      In my first chapter, I consider the long-term effects of World War II on women. WWII drew women into the workforce in unprecedented numbers and, often, into atypical occupations. After the war, they returned home where ...

    • Essays in Political Economy and Development 

      Okunogbe, Oyebola Motunrayo (2016-05-17)
      Chapter 1 examines the impact of interethnic exposure on national integration in a multiethnic state. It uses variation arising from a mandatory program in Nigeria that randomly posted university graduates to different ...

    • Essays in the Political Economy of Information 

      Cage, Julia (2014-06-06)
      The primary focus of this dissertation is on information, its production and dissemination in society. In the first chapter, I explore the consequences of an increase in the number of newspapers on the quantity and quality ...

    • Essays on Development Economics: Consumers, Firms, and Financial Institutions 

      Wang, Zhaoning (2016-05-18)
      This dissertation presents three chapters addressing issues pertaining to consumers, firms, and financial institutions in the developing world. The first chapter, co-authored with Juan Ma and Tarun Khanna, evaluates the ...

    • Fertility and the Plough 

      Alesina, Alberto Francesco; Giuliano, Paola; Nunn, Nathan (American Economic Association, 2011)
      This paper provides evidence that the form of agriculture traditionally practiced—intensive plough agriculture versus shifting hoe agriculture—affected historic norms and preferences about fertility, and that these norms ...

    • Historical legacies: A model linking Africa's past to its current underdevelopment 

      Nunn, Nathan (Elsevier BV, 2007)
      Recent studies have found evidence linking Africa’s current under-development to colonial rule and the slave trade. Given that these events ended long ago, why do they continue to matter today? I develop a model, exhibiting ...

    • The Importance of History for Economic Development 

      Nunn, Nathan (Annual Reviews, 2009)
      This article provides a survey of a growing body of empirical evidence that points toward the important long-term effects that historic events can have on economic development. The most recent studies, using microlevel ...

    • Incomplete contracts and the boundaries of the multinational firm 

      Nunn, Nathan; Trefler, Daniel (Elsevier BV, 2013)
      Using data on U.S. intra-firm and arm’s-length imports for 5,705 products imported from 220 countries, we examine the determinants of the share of U.S. imports that are intra-firm. We examine two predictions that arise from ...

    • The Long-Term Effects of Africa's Slave Trades 

      Nunn, Nathan (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2008)
      Can part of Africa's current underdevelopment be explained by its slave trades? To explore this question, I use data from shipping records and historical documents reporting slave ethnicities to construct estimates of the ...

    • On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough 

      Alesina, Alberto Francesco; Giuliano, Paola; Nunn, Nathan (Oxford University Press (OUP), 2013)
      The study examines the historical origins of existing cross-cultural differences in beliefs and values regarding the appropriate role of women in society. We test the hypothesis that traditional agricultural practices ...

    • The Potato's Contribution to Population and Urbanization: Evidence From A Historical Experiment 

      Nunn, Nathan; Qian, N. (Oxford University Press (OUP), 2011)
      We exploit regional variation in suitability for cultivating potatoes, together with time variation arising from their introduction to the Old World from the Americas, to estimate the impact of potatoes on Old World ...

    • Relationship-Specificity, Incomplete Contracts, and the Pattern of Trade 

      Nunn, Nathan (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2007)
      Is a country's ability to enforce contracts an important determinant of comparative advantage? To answer this question, I construct a variable that measures, for each good, the proportion of its intermediate inputs that ...

    • Religious Conversion in Colonial Africa 

      Nunn, Nathan (American Economic Association, 2010)

    • Ruggedness: The Blessing of Bad Geography in Africa 

      Nunn, Nathan; Puga, Diego (MIT Press - Journals, 2012)
      We show that geography, through its impact on history, can have important effects on economic development today. The analysis focuses on the historic interaction between ruggedness and Africa’s slave trades. Although rugged ...