Different perspectives on the claims in the paper, The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development

I was talking with an economist today about the recent prize given to the authors of the very influential 2001 article, The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation. According to my colleague, many economists have issues with that paper, with issues regarding data quality, the weakness of the instrument, and problems of selection bias in the analysis. The concern seems to be that those data could be used to show just about anything. Which, as usual, does not mean that their theories are wrong, just that their data are consistent with other theories.

I’ve never looked into this particular example, and a search of the blog turned up only this comment, so I’ll just pass along some references that my colleague sent to me:

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson (2001), The colonial origins of comparative development: An empirical investigation

David Y. Albouy (2012), The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation: Comment

Morgan Kelly (2019), The Standard Errors of Persistence

This recent post from Alex Tabarrok gives some sense of the importance and ideological dimensions of the work under discussion.

Some people love this work, some people don’t

From a sociology-of-science perspective, it’s interesting how this work is viewed differently in different corners of economics. As discussed by Tabarrok, “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development” has had a huge influence within and outside the field, and it generally appears to be viewed very positively. But researchers who focus on methodology and replication don’t trust it. I wonder whether some of the popularity of that paper and subsequent work in that area is that it has something to offer to both the right and the left, unlike a lot of work in macroeconomics which will push in just one direction.