The Agricultural and the Democratic Transitions Causality and the Roundup Model

Univ. Of Aarhus Dept. of Economics Working Paper No. 2009-6

22 Pages Posted: 1 Jun 2009

See all articles by Erich Gundlach

Erich Gundlach

University of Hamburg

Martin Paldam

Aarhus University - Department of Economics and Business Economics

Date Written: May 19, 2009

Abstract

Long-run development (in income) causes a large fall in the share of agriculture commonly known as the agricultural transition. We confirm that this conventional wisdom is strongly supported by the data. Long-run development (in income) also causes a large increase in democracy known as the democratic transition. Elsewhere we have shown that it is almost as strong as the agricultural transition. Recently, a method has been presented to weed out spuriousness. It makes the democratic transition go away by turning income insignificant, when it is supplemented by a set of formal controls. We show that the same method makes the agricultural transition go away as well. Hence, it seems to be a method that kills far too much, as suggested by the subtitle. This suggestion leads to a discussion of the very meaning of long-run causality.

Keywords: Long-run growth, transitions, causality and spuriousness

JEL Classification: O1, P5, Q1

Suggested Citation

Gundlach, Erich and Paldam, Martin, The Agricultural and the Democratic Transitions Causality and the Roundup Model (May 19, 2009). Univ. Of Aarhus Dept. of Economics Working Paper No. 2009-6, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1406931 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1406931

Erich Gundlach (Contact Author)

University of Hamburg ( email )

Department of Economics
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Hamburg, 20146
Germany
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HOME PAGE: http://www.erichgundlach.de

Martin Paldam

Aarhus University - Department of Economics and Business Economics ( email )

Universitetsparken
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DK-8000 Aarhus C
Denmark
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+45 8613 6334 (Fax)