James B. Ang

This study shows that traditional farming practices have a persistent effect on shaping cultural traits that influence modern‐day economic complexity. Societies with a legacy of growing more labour‐intensive crops tend to develop interdependence, creating a culture of collectivism. Conversely, societies with a history of farming less labour‐intensive crops tend to develop independent traits, leading to a culture of individualism. The dichotomy in these farming legacies gives rise to the individualism–collectivism cleavage, which may explain variation in the level of economic complexity. Using information on land suitability to construct measures of individualism‐ and collectivism‐enhancing environments, this paper finds that societies with a more individualist orientation tend to develop stronger innovative capabilities. This enables them to produce and export a wide range of sophisticated products, resulting in a high level of economic complexity. However, societies imbued with collectivistic cultures tend to have a less complex economic structure.

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 persistent pattern. Crop yield is measured by kilocalories per hectare per year under rain-fed conditions, which has the advantage of being highly exogenous. The hump-shaped relationship holds up to a battery of robustness tests. (JEL O11, O13)

This study proposes that countries with a cultural orientation toward individualism tend to enjoy a higher level of financial development. Estimates based on cross‐country data lend strong support to this hypothesis. Specifically, the results indicate that existing disparity in the level of financial development is significantly correlated with variation in the extent of individualism across countries, where a one standard deviation increase in individualism is associated with 0.631 standard deviations improvement in the level of financial development. The results are robust to a number of considerations. Additional results provide some support to the notion that individualistic culture and legal origin may serve as complements rather than substitutes to each other. (JEL O40, O50, Z10)

SUMMARY: Higher exposure to ultraviolet radiation (UV‐R) is associated with greater prevalence of eye disease such as cataracts. We hypothesize that the variation in the intensity of UV‐R can help explain the differences in institutional quality observed across countries. The long‐term incentive and ability to improve the quality of institutions decline when the probability of blindness increases. Our reduced‐form cross‐country results support this hypothesis. We then propose that the mechanism works from the impact of UV‐R on the prevalence of eye disease, which in turn shapes institutions. Our empirical evidence lends considerable support to this hypothesis.

This paper hypothesizes that inherent agricultural land productivity explains contemporary levels of autocracy and democracy. In particular, intermediate levels of productivity are associated with democracy, whereas a legacy of either low or high agricultural productivity is associated with autocracy. Our cross-country empirical results using data from up to 148 countries support this notion. The finding of an inverted U-shaped relationship holds up to a battery of robustness tests, and are supported by sub- national data from the US and India. Moreover, the persistence of the association is documented by utilizing data from pre-colonial societies.