The 2001 paper by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson(AJR 2001), which analyzed the impact of institutions formed in the early colonial period on long-term economic development, had a profound influence across the social sciences. It als...
The 2001 paper by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson(AJR 2001), which analyzed the impact of institutions formed in the early colonial period on long-term economic development, had a profound influence across the social sciences. It also gave rise to a line of research known as “persistence studies,” which examine how historical events from the distant past continue to affect the present. This article first provides an overview of AJR(2001), as well as the origins and influence of that paper, and then reviews various evaluations of persistence studies. It also examines the implications for economic history research in Korea.