Political Institutions, Economic Liberty, and the Great Divergence

2017/08/21 by Gary W. Cox · 3 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Biology #Competition (biology) #Culture, Economy, and Development Studies #Development economics #Divergence (linguistics) #Ecology #Economic geography #Economics #Economy #European union #Fragmentation (computing) #Geography #Historical Economic and Social Studies #International trade #Law #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Spillover effect #Western europe

paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0022050717000729

openalex publication_date 2017/08/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/13

Abstract

I argue that Europe's political fragmentation interacted with her political innovations—self-governing cities and national parliaments—to facilitate “economic liberty,” which in turn unleashed faster and more inter-connected urban growth. Examining urban growth over the period 600–1800 ce throughout Eurasia, I show that inter-city growth correlations were positive and significant only in Western Europe after 1200 ce . Within Western Europe, I show that growth correlations were greatest in the most fragmented and parliamentary areas, individual cities became significantly more tied to urban growth when their realms became parliamentary, and spillover effects (due to competition between rulers) were significant.

Citations

• Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England
• A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures
• Biases in Dynamic Models with Fixed Effects
• The Three Horsemen of Riches: Plague, War, and Urbanization in Early Modern Europe
• The New Cambridge Medieval History

Cited by

• A reassessment of the Great Divergence debate: towards a reconciliation of apparently distinct determinants
• State Capacity and Economic Development: Present and Past
• Great Divergence [wikipedia]