The 2nd AMSE Globalization Lecture will host Oded Galor, Chaire Herbert H. Goldberger, Brown University, about :
"Unified Growth Theory and Comparative Economic Development"
Chairman : Alain Trannoy, Director of Aix-Marseille Sciences Économiques/Aix Marseille School of Economics.
Discussants : Cecilia Garcia-Penalosa, Cnrs, Amse ; Raouf Boucekkine, Aix Marseille University and UCL.
"This research documents the longest possible shadow of human history on comparative development. It establishes that deep-rooted factors, determined tens of thousands of years ago, have had a significant effect on the course of economic development from the dawn of human civilization to the contemporary era. In particular, it shows that about 16 percent of the cross-country variation in income per capita in the year 2000 (conditional on institutional, cultural, and geographical covariates) can be attributed to variation in genetic -diversity across the globe, as determined 70,000-90,000 years ago.Thus, the research highlights one of the deepest channels in comparative development, pertaining not to factors associated with the dawn of complex agricultural societies, as in Diamond’s (1997) influential hypothesis, but to conditions innately related to the very dawn of mankind itself."
Contact : Yves Doazan, yves.doazan@univ-amu.fr