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:
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] [11] A 2024 review of 30 prominent persistence studies articles in leading journals found that after correcting the standard errors, few of the results approach statistical significance at conventional levels. [12]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Kamer Daron Acemoğlu is a Turkish-American economist of Armenian descent who has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1993, where he is currently the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics, and was named an Institute Professor at MIT in 2019. He received the John Bates Clark Medal in 2005, and the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2024.
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.
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.
Property rights are constructs in economics for determining how a resource or economic good is used and owned, which have developed over ancient and modern history, from Abrahamic law to Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Resources can be owned by individuals, associations, collectives, or governments.
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.
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".
Konstantin Sonin is a Russian economist. He is a professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), London, and an associate research fellow at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics. In recognition for his outstanding research in the field of political economy, in December 2015, he was named the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor of the University of Chicago.
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, who jointly received the 2024 Nobel Economics Prize for their contribution in comparative studies of prosperity between nations. 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, according to 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.
James Alan Robinson is a British-American economist and political scientist. He is the Rev. Dr. Richard L. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies and University Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy of the University of Chicago. At Harris, he also directs The Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conficts. Robinson previously taught at Harvard University from 2004 to 2015. With Daron Acemoglu, he is the co-author of books, such as The Narrow Corridor, Why Nations Fail and Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy.
Nancy Qian is a Chinese American economist and currently serves as the James J. O'Connor Professor of economics at the Kellogg School of Management MEDS and a Professor by Courtesy at the Department of Economics at Northwestern University. Her research interests include development economics, political economy and economic history. She is a leading development economist and an expert of autocracies and the Chinese economy.
Andrew John Scott is a British economist, currently Professor of Economics at London Business School, known for his work on longevity and macroeconomics. Previously he was a lecturer at Oxford University, a visiting professor at Harvard University and a researcher at the London School of Economics.
Melissa Dell is an American economist who 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.