How Long is the Shadow of History? The Long-Term Persistence of Economic Outcomes 

A conference co-sponsored by the All-UC Group in Economic History, the UCLA Anderson School of Management and the UCLA Economics department to be held at UCLA, May 18-19, 2012

Leah Boustan, Greg Clark and Romain Wacziarg, Organizers

For Questions Regarding Travel Arrangements, contact Leslie Culpepper.

The hotel for conference participants will be the Palomar Hotel.

Preliminary Program

Friday May 18, 2012: Long Run Sources of the Wealth of Nations

8:30: Breakfast

9:00: Quamrul Ashraf (Williams) and Oded Galor (Brown) “Cultural Diversity, Geographic Isolation and the Origin of the Wealth of Nations”

10:00: Coffee Break

10:15: Alberto Alesina (Harvard), Stelios Michalopoulos (Brown) and Elias Papaioannou (Dartmouth), “Ethnic Inequality”

11:15: William Easterly (NYU) and Ross Levine (Brown) “The European Origins of Economic Development”

12:15: Lunch

13:30: Saumitra Jha (Stanford) and Erik Meyersson (Stockholm): “The Long-Run Consequences of the Spread of Islam in South Asia”

14:30: Coffee Break

15:00: Graduate Student Session: (each session last ½ hour, including 10 minutes of discussion per paper)

1.      Mohamed Saleh (USC), “On the Road to Heaven: Historical Origins of the Religious Economic Gap in Egypt”

2.      Jim Siodla (UC, Irvine), “Razing San Francisco: A Natural Experiment Approach to Understanding the Legacy of Urban Land Use”

3.      Jordi Vidal-Robert (Boston University), “The Persistence of the Inquisitorial Mind: Long-Run Effects of the Spanish Inquisition”

16:30: Adjourn

19:00: Dinner: Keynote Speech (TBD) or Panel Discussion (TBD)

Saturday May 19, 2012: Mechanisms of Long Run Persistence

8:30: Breakfast

9:00: Emilio Depetris-Chauvin (Brown) and David N. Weil (Brown): “Malaria and Early African Development: Evidence from the Sickle Cell Trait”

10:00: Coffee Break

10:15: Eric Chaney (Harvard) and Richard Hornbeck (Harvard and NBER) “Malthusian Responses to Demographic Shocks and Extractive Institutions: Evidence from the 1609 Spanish Expulsion of Moriscos”

11:15: Sascha Becker (Warwick), “The Empire Is Dead, Long Live the Empire! Long-Run Persistence of Trust and Corruption in the Bureaucracy”

12:15: Lunch

13:30: Hoyt Bleakley (Chicago) “Portage: Path Dependence and Increasing Returns in U.S. History”

14:30: Coffee Break

15:00: Ran Abramitzky (Stanford), Leah Boustan (UCLA) and Katherine Ericksson (UCLA): “A Nation of Immigrants: Assimilation and Economic Outcomes in the Age of Mass Migration”

16:00: Adjourn

(Presentation format: 30 minutes for authors, 15 minutes for discussants, 15 minutes of general discussion. All discussants are to be announced).