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John H. Coatsworth

Bio: John H. Coatsworth is an academic researcher from Columbia University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Latin Americans & Independence. The author has an hindex of 21, co-authored 59 publications receiving 1706 citations. Previous affiliations of John H. Coatsworth include Harvard University & University of Chicago.


Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors examines three recent historical approaches to the political economy of Latin America's relative economic backwardness and locates the origins of contemporary underdevelopment in defective colonial institutions linked to inequality, but argues that they did not arise from colonial inequalities, but from the adaptation of Iberian practices to the American colonies under conditions of imperial weakness.
Abstract: This essay examines three recent historical approaches to the political economy of Latin America's relative economic backwardness. All three locate the origins of contemporary underdevelopment in defective colonial institutions linked to inequality. The contrasting view offered here affirms the significance of institutional constraints, but argues that they did not arise from colonial inequalities, but from the adaptation of Iberian practices to the American colonies under conditions of imperial weakness. Colonial inequality varied across the Americas; while it was not correlated with colonial economic performance, it mattered because it determined the extent of elite resistance to institutional modernisation after independence. The onset of economic growth in the mid to late nineteenth century brought economic elites to political power, but excluding majorities as inequality increased restrained the region's twentieth-century growth rates and prevented convergence.

166 citations

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TL;DR: The most important revisionist work has concentrated on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although major works have appeared on the sixteenth, seventeenth, and twentieth centuries as well as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: THE ECONOMIC HISTORY OF MEXICO HAS ADVANCED dramatically in recent years. The most important revisionist work has concentrated on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although major works have appeared on the sixteenth, seventeenth, and twentieth centuries as well.' Much of the new research has been quantitative or comparative, linking the study of Mexico's past to methodological currents in the United States and Western Europe.2 It is now possible to revise some of the principal hypotheses about Mexico's relative backwardness since the end of the colonial era. Comparative estimates of Mexican gross national product in the nineteenth century can be used to assess the impact of revisionist work on standard interpretations of Mexico's economic history from the Bourbons to the Revolution of I9IO. By way of introduction, two caveats are worth stressing. First, spurious precision infects all, or nearly all, quantitative historical work. Margins of error are necessarily large in estimates of national product based on fragmentary data, the guesswork of interested contemporaries, and the imagination of the modern researcher. This is even truer of estimates produced to test hypotheses about what might have been, as the "new economic history" has amply demonstrated during the past decade or so in the United States. I take it as a duty, therefore, to issue a clear warning: all of the numbers in this article are, without exception, inaccurate; however, that is not a valid argument against their use. Literary estimates typically contain fewer errors (we

146 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors reviewed the consequences of the paradigm shift in Latin American economic historiography from structuralism to the New Institutional Economics (NIE) and examined the latest long-range comparisons of productivity between the Latin American and U.S. economies, concluding that the relative economic stagnation of the past quarter century may not render structuralism entirely irrelevant.
Abstract: The following three articles, together with this brief introduction, review the consequences of the paradigm shift in Latin American economic historiography from structuralism to the New Institutional Economics (NIE). Joseph Love analyzes the basic tenets of structuralism, their connection to dependency, the influence of CEPAL on policymaking, and how a generation of historians utilized the methodologies of structuralism to research historical problems in Latin American development. John H. Coatsworth's contribution correlates the decline of the structuralist model to the rise of research interests in the role of institutions in economic history and examines the latest long-range comparisons of productivity between the Latin American and U.S. economies. Commenting on the recent research utilizing the NIE, Coatsworth agrees with Love that the relative economic stagnation of the past quarter century may not render structuralism entirely irrelevant. Sandra Kuntz Ficker summarizes the basic positions held by the structuralist and dependentista schools with respect to commercial policy and concludes with a discussion of how the NIE contributes to innovative research on Latin American foreign trade. These articles resulted from the authors' participation in a LARR-sponsored panel at the 2004 Latin American Studies Association Congress. Los siguientes tres articulos, junto a esta breve introduccion, repasan las consecuencias que el cambio de paradigma del estructuralismo a la Nueva Economia Institucional (NEI) han producido en la historiografia economica de America Latina. Joseph Love analiza los principios basicos del estructuralismo, su conexion con la teoria de la dependencia, la influencia de la CEPAL en la toma de decisiones politicas y como una generacion de historiadores utilizo las metodologias del estructuralismo para indagar los problemas historicos del desarrollo latinoamericano. En su contribucion, John H. Coatsworth relaciona el declive del modelo estructuralista con el aumento del interes academico por el rol que las instituciones tuvieron en el desarrollo de la historia economica, y examina las mas recientes comparaciones de la productividad de largo plazo de las economias latino y norteamericanas. Coatsworth coincide con Love en su vision sobre los mas recientes analisis que emplean la perspectiva de la NEI, en cuanto a que el relativo estancamiento de la economia durante el ultimo cuarto de siglo no deja al estructuralismo en una posicion irrelevante. Sandra Kuntz Ficker resume las posturas de las escuelas estructuralista y dependentista con respecto a las politicas comerciales, y concluye con una discusion acerca de la innovacion que la NEI ha generado en la investigacion sobre el comercio internacional latinoamericano. Estos articulos se originaron en la participacion de estos autores en el foro organizado por LARR en el XXV Congreso Internacional de LASA de 2004.

116 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article reported that tariffs in Latin America were the world's highest long before the Great Depression, which is a surprising fact given that Latin America is believed to have exploited globalisation forces better than most regions before the 1920s, and given that the 1930s have always been viewed as the critical decade when Latin American policy became so anti-global.
Abstract: This article reports a fact that has not been well appreciated: tariffs in Latin America were the world's highest long before the Great Depression. This is a surprising fact, given that Latin America is believed to have exploited globalisation forces better than most regions before the 1920s, and given that the 1930s have always been viewed as the critical decade when Latin American policy became so anti-global. The explanation does not lie with imagined output gains from protection in these young republics, but rather with state revenue needs, strategic responses to trading partner tariffs and a need to compensate globalisation's losers.

116 citations


Cited by
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TL;DR: Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson as discussed by the authors used estimates of potential European settler mortality as an instrument for institutional variation in former European colonies today, and they followed the lead of Curtin who compiled data on the death rates faced by European soldiers in various overseas postings.
Abstract: In Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson, henceforth AJR, (2001), we advanced the hypothesis that the mortality rates faced by Europeans in different parts of the world after 1500 affected their willingness to establish settlements and choice of colonization strategy. Places that were relatively healthy (for Europeans) were—when they fell under European control—more likely to receive better economic and political institutions. In contrast, places where European settlers were less likely to go were more likely to have “extractive” institutions imposed. We also posited that this early pattern of institutions has persisted over time and influences the extent and nature of institutions in the modern world. On this basis, we proposed using estimates of potential European settler mortality as an instrument for institutional variation in former European colonies today. Data on settlers themselves are unfortunately patchy—particularly because not many went to places they believed, with good reason, to be most unhealthy. We therefore followed the lead of Curtin (1989 and 1998) who compiled data on the death rates faced by European soldiers in various overseas postings. 1 Curtin’s data were based on pathbreaking data collection and statistical work initiated by the British military in the mid-nineteenth century. These data became part of the foundation of both contemporary thinking about public health (for soldiers and for civilians) and the life insurance industry (as actuaries and executives considered the

6,495 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that a hemispheric perspective across a wide range of colonies established in the New World by the Europeans suggests that although there were many influences, factor endowments or initial conditions had profound and enduring effects on the long-run paths of institutional and economic development followed by the respective economies.
Abstract: The explanations offered for the contrasting records of long-run growth and development among the societies of North and South America most often focus on institutions. The traditional explanations for the sources of these differences in institutions, typically highlight the significance of national heritage or religion. We, in contrast, argue that a hemispheric perspective across the wide range of colonies established in the New World by the Europeans suggests that although there were many influences, factor endowments or initial conditions had profound and enduring effects on the long-run paths of institutional and economic development followed by the respective economies.

1,542 citations

Book
18 Jan 2001
TL;DR: A great divide had developed within "the rest", the lines drawn according to prewar manufacturing experience and equality in income distribution by 2000 as mentioned in this paper, and a select number of countries outside Japan and the West had built their own national manufacturing enterprises that were investing heavily in R&D.
Abstract: After World War II a select number of countries outside Japan and the West-those that Alice Amsden calls "the rest"-gained market share in modern industries and altered global competition. By 2000, a great divide had developed within "the rest", the lines drawn according to prewar manufacturing experience and equality in income distribution. China, India, Korea and Taiwan had built their own national manufacturing enterprises that were investing heavily in R&D. Their developmental states had transformed themselves into champions of science and technology. By contrast, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico had experienced a wave of acquisitions and mergers that left even more of their leading enterprises controlled by multinational firms. The developmental states of Mexico and Turkey had become hand-tied by membership in NAFTA and the European Union. Which model of late industrialization will prevail, the "independent" or the "integrationist," is a question that challenges the twenty-first century.

1,097 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors construct a model of simultaneous change and persistence in institutions, where the main idea is that equilibrium economic institutions are a result of the exercise of de jure and de facto political power.
Abstract: We construct a model of simultaneous change and persistence in institutions. The model consists of landowning elites and workers, and the key economic decision concerns the form of economic institutions regulating the transaction of labor (e.g., competitive markets versus labor repression). The main idea is that equilibrium economic institutions are a result of the exercise of de jure and de facto political power. A change in political institutions, for example a move from nondemocracy to democracy, alters the distribution of de jure political power, but the elite can intensify their investments in de facto political power, such as lobbying or the use of paramilitary forces, to partially or fully offset their loss of de jure power. In the baseline model, equilibrium changes in political institutions have no effect on the (stochastic) equilibrium distribution of economic institutions, leading to a particular form of persistence in equilibrium institutions, which we refer to as invariance. When the model is enriched to allow for limits on the exercise of de facto power by the elite in democracy or for costs of changing economic institutions, the equilibrium takes the form of a Markov regime-switching process with state dependence. Finally, when we allow for the possibility that changing political institutions is more difficult than altering economic institutions, the model leads to a pattern of captured democracy, whereby a democratic regime may survive, but choose economic institutions favoring the elite. The main ideas featuring in the model are illustrated using historical examples from the U.S. South, Latin America and Liberia.

993 citations