Essays on long-run growth and economic development
(2023)
Files
PhD_thesis_Arnaud_Deseau.pdf
Restricted Access - Adobe PDF
- 8.73 MB
Details
- Authors
- Supervisors
- Abstract
- This thesis contributes to the literature that seeks to understand the long-term determinants of economic growth and development. The first chapter studies the importance of access to justice, a determinant hitherto neglected in the literature, for economic growth between 1970 and 2014. It provides a new database for tracking the fundamental and historical evolution of access to justice at the country level and establishes that the positive effect of access to justice on growth is stronger in less developed societies. The second chapter investigates the strength of the Malthusian trap before the Industrial Revolution, contributing to clarify the ongoing debate about how quickly Malthusian economies adjust to shocks and return to their long-run stagnation equilibrium. It provides evidence of weak homeostasis (slow adjustments), with shock half-lives of about a century. Finally, the third chapter examines the effect of market-based land reforms on agricultural productivity, using the unique framework of the confiscation and auction of Church lands that took place during the French Revolution. It provides a new database for proxying French monastic landholdings prior to the Revolution and suggests that market-based land reallocation can increase agricultural productivity through the emergence of large farms, using mechanized production techniques and specialized rather than family labor.
- Affiliations
Citations
Deseau, A. (2023). Essays on long-run growth and economic development. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/99875