Fractured Land and the Puzzle of Political Unification and Fragmentation
Patterns of political unification and fragmentation have important implications for economic development. Diamond (1997a) famously argued that fractured land was responsible for China’s tendency towards political unification and Europe’s persistent political fragmentation. We build a model to explore the effects of geography on political fragmentation in Eurasia. We find that topography, or fractured land, is necessary but not sufficient to account for China’s early political centralization and Europe’s persistent political fragmentation. The existence, or lack thereof, of a dominant core region of high land productivity also plays a critical role in explaining the political divergence at the two ends of Eurasia.

Please sign up for meetings here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XJOSHywCIKfSQ2nIJ92bsYS15n_OJgATKDbjRxgQ-zo/edit#gid=0
Date: 28 November 2019, 13:00 (Thursday, 7th week, Michaelmas 2019)
Venue: Manor Road Building, Manor Road OX1 3UQ
Venue Details: Seminar Room C
Speaker: Mark Koyama (George Mason University)
Organising department: Department of Economics
Part of: Department of Economics Seminar
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Melis Clark