主 题: Bandits, State Capacity, and Malthusian Transition: The Lasting Impact of the Taiping Rebellion
内容简介: We study the long-term impact of the Taiping Rebellion (TP) in China, the deadliest civil war in history, on the population level and the current level of development. By analyzing prefecture-level data from Qing dynasty to now, we show that, compared to the control group, the TP had resulted in a permanent population loss in the TP prefectures, and the population increase in the TP regions (compared to the baseline year 1776) relative to other regions remain 38 to 67 percent lower 140 years after the Rebellion. The results remain robust after we instrument TP with a plausible instrument based on its war routing strategy. Moreover, TP prefectures have greater fiscal capacity and modern sectors now. We offer evidence that two channels for the TP effect are stationary banditry (as manifested in variations in land property rights and the distance to the TP capital) and wartime strengthening of fiscal capacity. We find the TP regions with better land property rights and/or being closer to the capital have faster population recovery, and higher income, stronger fiscal capacity, higher human capital, and higher share of non-agriculture or manufacturing one and half centuries later. There is also evidence of complementary between wartime state capacity and local institutions. Furthermore, initial human capital is strongly associated with long-term development. The findings that the TP results in a sustained lower population level and stronger long-term development imply that this gigantic war facilitated the Malthusian demographic transition to Post-Malthusian and/or modern growth regimes via institutional development and the strengthening of fiscal capacity.
报告人: 徐立新 教授
时 间: 2018-06-29 10:30
地 点: 位育楼117
举办单位: 金融学院 科研部 经济与金融研究院
