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Introduction to Modern Economic Growth
a spurious relationship between latitude and income per capita. However, once economic institutions are properly controlled for, these relationships go away and there
appears to be no causal effect of geography on prosperity today (though geography
may have been important historically in shaping economic institutions).
4.4.5. Culture, Colonial Identity and Economic Development. One might
think that culture may have played an important role in the colonial experience, since
Europeans not only brought new institutions, but also their own “cultures”. European culture might have affected the economic development of former European
colonies through three different channels. First, as already mentioned above, cultures may be systematically related to the national identity of the colonizing power.
For example, the British may have implanted a “good” Anglo-Saxon culture into
colonies such as Australia and the United States, while the Spanish may have condemned Latin America by endowing it with an Iberian culture. Second, Europeans
may have had a culture, work ethic or set of beliefs that were conducive to prosperity. Finally, Europeans also brought different religions with different implications
for prosperity. Many of these hypotheses have been suggested as explanations for
why Latin America, with its Roman Catholic religion and Iberian culture, is poor
relative to the Anglo-Saxon Protestant North America.
However, the econometric evidence in Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2001)
is not consistent with any of these views either. Similar to the evidence related to
geographical variables, the econometric strategy discussed above suggests that, once
the effect of economic institutions is taken into account, neither the identity of the
colonial power, nor the contemporary fraction of Europeans in the population, nor
the proportions of the populations of various religions appear to have a direct effect
on economic growth and income per capita.
These econometric results are supported by historical examples. Although no
Spanish colony has been as successful economically as British colonies such as the
United States, many former British colonies, such as those in Africa, India and
Bangladesh, are poor today. It is also clear that the British in no way simply
re-created British institutions in their colonies. For example, by 1619 the North
American colony of Virginia had a representative assembly with universal male
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