The Cross of Gold: Brazilian Treasure and the Decline of Portugal

2025/07/08 by Davis Kedrosky, Nuno Palma · 1 voice
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Commodity #Culture, Economy, and Development Studies #Curse #Dutch disease #Economics #Economy #Exchange rate #Geography #Goods and services #Historical Economic and Social Studies #International economics #Market economy #Monetary economics #Natural Resources and Economic Development #Natural resource #Political science #Portuguese #Resource curse #Treasure

paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0022050725100764

openalex publication_date 2025/07/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15

Abstract

As late as 1750, Portugal had a high output per head by Western European standards. Yet just a century later, Portugal was this region’s poorest country. In this paper, we show that the discovery of massive quantities of gold in Brazil over the eighteenth century played a key role in the long-run development of Portugal. The country suffered from an economic and political resource curse. A counterfactual based on synthetic control methods suggests that by 1800 Portugal’s GDP per capita was 40 percent lower than it would have been without its endowment of Brazilian gold.

Citations

• Booming Sector and De-Industrialisation in a Small Open Economy
• Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England
• BOOMING SECTOR AND DUTCH DISEASE ECONOMICS: SURVEY AND CONSOLIDATION *
• The Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War
• Comparative Politics and the Synthetic Control Method
• Anatomy of a premodern state
• The Augmented Synthetic Control Method
• The narrow moving band, the Dutch disease, and the competitive consequences of Mrs. Thatcher
• The great escape? The contribution of the empire to Portugal's economic growth, 1500–1800
• The long decline of a leading economy: GDP in central and northern Italy, 1300-1913
• The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth
• L’histoire immobile?A reappraisal of French economic growth using the demand-side approach, 1280–1850

Discussions

• 🇧🇷 🇵🇹 **The Cross of Gold: Brazilian Treasure and the Decline of Portugal** "_In this paper, we show that the discovery of massive quantities of gold in Brazil over the eighteenth century played a [mastodon, 0 points, 0 comments]