Dear workshop community,
We will convene for the Harvard University Applied Statistics Workshop (Gov
3009) TOMORROW on Wednesday (4/17).
The speaker is* Melissa Dell *(Harvard) who will be presenting her work,
"The Development Effects Of The Extractive Colonial Economy: The Dutch
Cultivation System In Java".
*Where:* CGIS Knafel Building, Room K354 (see this link
<https://map.harvard.edu/?bld=04471&level=9> for directions).
*When: *Wednesday, April 17th at 12 noon - 1:30 pm.
*Abstract: *
Colonial powers typically organized economic activity in the colonies to
maximize their economic returns. While the literature has emphasized
long-run negative economic impacts via institutional quality, the changes
in economic organization implemented to spur production historically could
also directly influence economic organization in the long-run, exerting
countervailing effects. We examine these in the context of the Dutch
Cultivation System, the integrated industrial and agricultural system for
producing sugar that formed the core of the Dutch colonial enterprise in
19th century Java. We show that areas close to where the Dutch established
sugar factories in the mid-19th century are today more industrialized, have
better infrastructure, are more educated, and are richer than nearby
counterfactual locations that would have been similarly suitable for
colonial sugar factories. We also show, using a spatial regression
discontinuity design on the catchment areas around each factory, that
villages forced to grow sugar cane have more village owned land and also
have more schools and substantially higher education levels, both
historically and today. The results suggest that the economic structures
implemented by colonizers to facilitate production can continue to promote
economic activity in the long run, and we discuss the contexts where such
effects are most likely to be important.
*All are welcome! Lunch is provided! *
Best,
Connor Jerzak
Applied Statistics Workshop -- Graduate Student Coordinator
An anonymous feedback form for the workshop can be found here at this link
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScp4lPVBtp4Akf6K6ggmfcTUSIUHEJX89-CU8HWrQPpe9pjTw/viewform?usp=sf_link>.
Workshop listserv sign-up at this link
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