Work in Progress

On the one hand, a high level of military skill among the population is necessary to wage war; on the other hand, an armed and trained population has stronger bargaining power and is less willing to submit to the taxation demanded by the central government. This project establishes theoretical foundations for the trade-off faced by early modern states, and study its implications for the long-run state development process.

This paper studies the Malthusian constraint on local living standards in colonial South Asia, based on a novel district-level dataset of subsistence ratios.

Abstract

Is a delayed fertility transition a barrier to structural change? This paper explores a mechanism based on differential demographic behavior between sectors.