The Ancient Origins of the Wealth of Nations

Marc Klemp, Quamrul Ashraf and Oded Galor

No 15345, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This essay explores the deepest roots of economic development. It underscores the significance of evolutionary processes in shaping fundamental individual and cultural traits, such as time preference, risk and loss aversion, and predisposition towards child quality, that have contributed to technological progress, human-capital formation, and economic development. Moreover, it highlights the persistent mark of the exodus of Homo sapiens from Africa tens of thousands of years ago on the degree of interpersonal population diversity across the globe and examines the impact of this variation in diversity for comparative economic, cultural, and institutional development across countries, regions, and ethnic groups.

Keywords: Comparative development; Human evolution; Natural selection; Preference for child quality; Time preference; Loss aversion; Entrepreneurial spirit; The; Interpersonal diversity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N10 N30 O11 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-evo, nep-gro, nep-his and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15345 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: The Ancient Origins of the Wealth of Nations (2020)
Working Paper: The Ancient Origins of the Wealth of Nations (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:15345

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15345

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().