【主讲】陈强 教授 (山东大学 泰岳经济研究中心)
【主题】Natural Disasters, Ethnic Diversity, and the Size of Nations: Two Thousand Years of Unification and Division in Historical China
【时间】2014年5月14日 (周三) 10：00-11：30
【地点】上海财经大学经济学院楼801室
【语言】中文
【摘要】The size of nations matters, but the literature is long on theory and short on empirics. Using a unique time series data set spanning the past two millennia, we study the process of unification and division in historical China. The Empirical results are consistent with the theory on the size and number of nations. First, more frequent famines reduced the number of nations in China; as the cost of public goods (e.g. disaster relief) rose, a larger nation was more efficient in public goods provision. Second, increased ethnic diversity was associated with increased number of nations, as smaller nations could better serve a heterogeneous population. These results survive a variety of robustness checks after controlling for nomadic attacks and a richest of climate variables using both annual and decadal data.
