Persistence studies

Last updated

Persistence studies is scholarship in the social sciences that links, usually through quantitative causal inference, historical events with later political, economic and social outcomes. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] It is particularly prevalent in economics, economic history, political science, and sociology. The scholarship emerged in the early 2000s. [1] Early landmark studies include two studies by economists Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson in 2001 and 2002 that linked colonial institutions to variations in contemporary economic outcomes. [1] [7] [8]

According to Alexandra Cirone and Thomas Pepinsky, there are typically five steps in persistence scholarship:

  1. "Define and measure a causal variable of interest."
  2. "Characterize its assignment mechanism."
  3. "Define and measure a relevant outcome variable."
  4. "Estimate the effect of the causal variable on the outcome variable using a research design that is appropriate given the proposed assignment mechanism."
  5. "Characterize the causal mechanisms that link the causal variable and the outcome." [1]

According to Nathan Nunn, persistence studies usually take the following form,

[Scholars] begin by collecting new data, often from archival sources, that measure aspects of the historical episode of interest. These data are then connected to contemporary outcomes of interest, matched through populations, societies, or locations, to test whether the historical factor has a causal effect on the contemporary factors being examined. Statistical analysis is undertaken, studying variation across individuals, ethnicities, or countries and using empirical techniques (such as instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, difference-in-difference, or natural experiments) that are aimed at distinguishing causal relationships from mere correlation. Having established the importance of a historical factor or episode for outcomes today, an attempt is then made to understand the exact causal mechanisms that account for the observed relationship. This generally requires the collection of additional data and additional statistical analysis, as well as an integration of the historical literature and descriptive evidence. [9]

What distinguishes persistence research from broader comparative research on historical legacies is the use of precise causal inference methods. [1]

Critics of persistence studies argue the pitfalls of the approach lie in a "failure to recognize institutional change ("anti-persistence"), vague mechanisms, the insufficient use (or misuse) of historical sources and narratives, the compression of history, and a failure to account for the effects of geography." [10] [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Economic history</span>

Economic history is the study of history using methodological tools from economics or with a special attention to economic phenomena. Research is conducted using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and the application of economic theory to historical situations and institutions. The field can encompass a wide variety of topics, including equality, finance, technology, labour, and business. It emphasizes historicizing the economy itself, analyzing it as a dynamic entity and attempting to provide insights into the way it is structured and conceived.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Environmental determinism</span> Theory that a societys development is predetermined by its physical environment

Environmental determinism is the study of how the physical environment predisposes societies and states towards particular economic or social developmental trajectories. Jared Diamond, Jeffrey Herbst, Ian Morris, and other social scientists sparked a revival of the theory during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This "neo-environmental determinism" school of thought examines how geographic and ecological forces influence state-building, economic development, and institutions. While archaic versions of the geographic interpretation were used to encourage colonialism and eurocentrism, modern figures like Diamond use this approach to reject the racism in these explanations. Diamond argues that European powers were able to colonize due to unique advantages bestowed by their environment as opposed to any kind of inherent superiority.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Institution</span> Structure or mechanism of social order

An institution is a humanly devised structure of rules and norms that shape and constrain social behavior. All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions and norms are all examples of institutions. Institutions vary in their level of formality and informality.

A case study is an in-depth, detailed examination of a particular case within a real-world context. For example, case studies in medicine may focus on an individual patient or ailment; case studies in business might cover a particular firm's strategy or a broader market; similarly, case studies in politics can range from a narrow happening over time like the operations of a specific political campaign, to an enormous undertaking like world war, or more often the policy analysis of real-world problems affecting multiple stakeholders.

Neo institutionalism is an approach to the study of institutions that focuses on the constraining and enabling effects of formal and informal rules on the behavior of individuals and groups. New institutionalism traditionally encompasses three major strands: sociological institutionalism, rational choice institutionalism, and historical institutionalism. New institutionalism originated in work by sociologist John Meyer published in 1977.

Path dependence is a concept in the social sciences, referring to processes where past events or decisions constrain later events or decisions. It can be used to refer to outcomes at a single point in time or to long-run equilibria of a process. Path dependence has been used to describe institutions, technical standards, patterns of economic or social development, organizational behavior, and more.

Modernization theory holds that as societies become more economically modernized, wealthier and more educated, their political institutions become increasingly liberal democratic. The "classical" theories of modernization of the 1950s and 1960s, most influentially articulated by Seymour Lipset, drew on sociological analyses of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Talcott Parsons. Modernization theory was a dominant paradigm in the social sciences in the 1950s and 1960s, and saw a resurgence after 1991, when Francis Fukuyama wrote about the end of the Cold War as confirmation on modernization theory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steven Levitt</span> American economist

Steven David Levitt is an American economist and co-author of the best-selling book Freakonomics and its sequels. Levitt was the winner of the 2003 John Bates Clark Medal for his work in the field of crime, and is currently the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago as well as the Faculty Director and Co-Founder of the Center for Radical Innovation for Social Change at the University of Chicago which incubates the Data Science for Everyone coalition. He was co-editor of the Journal of Political Economy published by the University of Chicago Press until December 2007. In 2009, Levitt co-founded TGG Group, a business and philanthropy consulting company. He was chosen as one of Time magazine's "100 People Who Shape Our World" in 2006. A 2011 survey of economics professors named Levitt their fourth favorite living economist under the age of 60, after Paul Krugman, Greg Mankiw and Daron Acemoglu.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daron Acemoglu</span> Turkish-American economist

Kamer Daron Acemoğlu is a Turkish-born American economist who has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1993, where he is currently the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics. He received the John Bates Clark Medal in 2005, and was named an Institute Professor at MIT in 2019.

New Institutional Economics (NIE) is an economic perspective that attempts to extend economics by focusing on the institutions that underlie economic activity and with analysis beyond earlier institutional economics and neoclassical economics. Unlike neoclassical economics, it also considers the role of culture and classical political economy in economic development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fabrizio Zilibotti</span> Italian economist

Fabrizio Zilibotti is an Italian economist. He is the Tuntex Professor of International and Development Economics at Yale University. Zilibotti was previously professor of economics at University College London, the University of Zürich, and at the Institute for International Economic Studies in Stockholm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geography and wealth</span>

Geography and wealth have long been perceived as correlated attributes of nations. Scholars such as Jeffrey D. Sachs argue that geography has a key role in the development of a nation's economic growth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joshua Angrist</span> Israeli–American economist

Joshua David Angrist is an Israeli–American economist and Ford Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Angrist, together with Guido Imbens, was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2021 "for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships".

In statistics, econometrics, political science, epidemiology, and related disciplines, a regression discontinuity design (RDD) is a quasi-experimental pretest–posttest design that aims to determine the causal effects of interventions by assigning a cutoff or threshold above or below which an intervention is assigned. By comparing observations lying closely on either side of the threshold, it is possible to estimate the average treatment effect in environments in which randomisation is unfeasible. However, it remains impossible to make true causal inference with this method alone, as it does not automatically reject causal effects by any potential confounding variable. First applied by Donald Thistlethwaite and Donald Campbell (1960) to the evaluation of scholarship programs, the RDD has become increasingly popular in recent years. Recent study comparisons of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and RDDs have empirically demonstrated the internal validity of the design.

Process tracing is a qualitative research method used to develop and test theories. Process-tracing can be defined as the following: it is the systematic examination of diagnostic evidence selected and analyzed in light of research questions and hypotheses posed by the investigator. Process-tracing thus focuses on (complex) causal relationships between the independent variable(s) and the outcome of the dependent variable(s), evaluates pre-existing hypotheses and discovers new ones. It is generally understood as a "within-case" method to draw inferences on the basis of causal mechanisms, but it can also be used for ideographic research or small-N case-studies. It has been used in social sciences, as well as in natural sciences.

<i>Why Nations Fail</i> 2012 book by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, first published in 2012, is a book by economists Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. The book applies insights from institutional economics, development economics and economic history to understand why nations develop differently, with some succeeding in the accumulation of power and prosperity and others failing, via a wide range of historical case studies.

Causal inference is the process of determining the independent, actual effect of a particular phenomenon that is a component of a larger system. The main difference between causal inference and inference of association is that causal inference analyzes the response of an effect variable when a cause of the effect variable is changed. The study of why things occur is called etiology, and can be described using the language of scientific causal notation. Causal inference is said to provide the evidence of causality theorized by causal reasoning.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James A. Robinson</span> British political scientist and economist (born 1960)

James Alan Robinson is a British economist and political scientist. He is currently the Reverend Dr. Richard L. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies and University Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago. He also serves as the Institute Director of The Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts at the Harris School. Robinson has previously taught at Harvard University between 2004 and 2015 and also at the University of California, Berkeley, University of Southern California and the University of Melbourne.

Melissa Dell is the Andrew E. Furer Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Her research interests include development economics, political economy, and economic history.

Critical juncture theory focuses on critical junctures, i.e., large, rapid, discontinuous changes, and the long-term causal effect or historical legacy of these changes. Critical junctures are turning points that alter the course of evolution of some entity. Critical juncture theory seeks to explain both (1) the historical origin and maintenance of social order, and (2) the occurrence of social change through sudden, big leaps.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Cirone, Alexandra; Pepinsky, Thomas B. (2022). "Historical Persistence". Annual Review of Political Science. 25 (1): 241–259. doi: 10.1146/annurev-polisci-051120-104325 . ISSN   1094-2939.
  2. ↑ Cioni, Martina; Federico, Giovanni; Vasta, Michelangelo (2022). "Persistence studies: a new kind of economic history?". Review of Regional Research. 42 (3): 227–248. doi:10.1007/s10037-022-00167-0. hdl: 11365/1185654 . ISSN   1613-9836.
  3. 1 2 Abad, Leticia Arroyo; Maurer, Noel (2021). "History Never Really Says Goodbye: A Critical Review of the Persistence Literature". Journal of Historical Political Economy. 1 (1): 31–68. doi:10.1561/115.00000002. ISSN   2693-9290.
  4. ↑ Acharya, Avidit; Blackwell, Matthew; Sen, Maya (2023), Jenkins, Jeffery A.; Rubin, Jared (eds.), "Historical Persistence", The Oxford Handbook of Historical Political Economy (1 ed.), Oxford University Press, pp. 117–142, doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197618608.013.7, ISBN   978-0-19-761860-8
  5. ↑ Nunn, Nathan (2014), Historical Development, Handbook of Economic Growth, vol. 2, Elsevier, pp. 347–402, doi:10.1016/b978-0-444-53538-2.00007-1, ISBN   978-0-444-53546-7
  6. ↑ Nunn, Nathan (2009). "The Importance of History for Economic Development". Annual Review of Economics. 1 (1): 65–92. doi:10.1146/annurev.economics.050708.143336. ISSN   1941-1383.
  7. ↑ Acemoglu, D.; Johnson, S.; Robinson, J. A. (2002). "Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution". The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 117 (4): 1231–1294. doi:10.1162/003355302320935025. ISSN   0033-5533.
  8. ↑ Acemoglu, Daron; Johnson, Simon; Robinson, James A. (2001). "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation". American Economic Review. 91 (5): 1369–1401. doi:10.1257/aer.91.5.1369. ISSN   0002-8282.
  9. ↑ Nunn, Nathan (2020). "The historical roots of economic development". Science. 367 (6485). doi:10.1126/science.aaz9986. ISSN   0036-8075. PMID   32217703.
  10. ↑ Malik, Adeel; Bouaroudj, Vanessa (2021). "The Predicament of Establishing Persistence: Slavery and Human Capital in Africa". Journal of Historical Political Economy. 1 (3): 411–446. doi:10.1561/115.00000015. ISSN   2693-9290.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.