The bounty of the sea and long-run development
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The bounty of the sea and long‑run development Carl‑Johan Dalgaard1 · Anne Sofie B. Knudsen2 · Pablo Selaya3
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract We document that a high level of natural productivity of the ocean—a rich bounty of the sea—has had a positive and persistent impact on economic development since pre-industrial times until today. In addition, we document that it is the bounty of the sea of the ancestors of current populations which drives the persistent effect, not geography per se. We argue that an explanation is that a rich bounty of the sea facilitated early coastal settlements and an early coastal orientation of pre-industrial economic activity. This gave rise to occupations outside of agriculture and capabilities that were complementary to early industrialization. In the long run this contributed to an early take-off to sustained economic growth. Keywords Comparative development · Coastal orientation · Industrialization JEL Classification O11 · O13 · O47 · O57
We would like to thank Quamrul Ashraf, Sascha Becker, Davide Cantoni, Matteo Cervellati, Melissa Dell, James Fenske, Oded Galor, Murat Iyigun, Robert Klemmensen, Marc Klemp, Omer Licandro, Anastasia Litina, Stelios Michalopoulos, Nathan Nunn, Karl Gunnar Persson, James A. Robinson, David N. Weil, Asger Wingender and seminar participants at Universidad Católica de Chile, Barcelona GSE, CESifo-Munich University, Brown University, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) Tokyo, University of Southern Denmark, University of Oxford, University of Luxemburg, and Trinity College Dublin, for helpful comments and discussions. Pablo Selaya furthermore thanks the Danish Council for Independent Research for funding this research (Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond, Sapere Aude Grant No. 11-119834). Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1088 7-020-09181-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Pablo Selaya [email protected] 1
Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen, CAGE, and CEPR, Copenhagen, Denmark
2
Department of Economics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
3
Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Journal of Economic Growth
1 Introduction While the natural productivity of land, in the sense of its potential nutritional benefits, has received ample attention in the literature on comparative development, it is surprising to observe that the role played by the natural productivity of oceans—or the bounty of the sea—has been ignored.1 In this paper we take a first step towards changing this state of affairs and explore the impact of the bounty of the sea on long-run development. We document that a rich bounty of the sea has had a persistent impact on economic 0development, stimulating it since pre-industrial times until the present. Furthermore, we show that it is the bounty of the sea of the ancestors of current popul
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