This paper provides empirical evidence that inherent crop yield and democracy exhibit an inverted U-shaped relationship.
Authors
Satyendra Kumar Gupta, Assistant Professor, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, O. P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India.
James B. Ang, Associate professor, Department of Economics, School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Per G. Fredriksson, Professor, Department of Economics, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, US.
Summary
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 per- sistent pattern. Crop yield is measured by ki- localories per hectare per year under rain-fed conditions, which has the advantage of being highly exogenous.
The hump-shaped relation- ship holds up to a battery of robustness tests.
Published in: Land Economics
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