Daniel Oto-Peralías

The Distribution of Legal Traditions around the World: A Contribution to the Legal-Origins Theory

The distribution of the common law was conditioned by a colonial strategy sensitive to the colonies’ level of endowments, exhibiting a more effective implantation of the legal system in initially sparsely populated territories with a temperate climate. This translates into a negative relationship of precolonial population density and settler mortality with legal outcomes for common-law countries. By contrast, the implantation of the French civil law was not systematically influenced by initial conditions, which is reflected in the lack of such a relationship for this legal family. The common law does not generally lead to legal outcomes superior to those provided by the French civil law when precolonial population density and/or settler mortality are high. The form of colonial rule in British colonies is found to mediate between precolonial endowments and postcolonial legal outcomes.

The Long‐Term Effects of Political Violence on Political Attitudes: Evidence from the Spanish Civil War

This article investigates whether political violence has long�?term effects on attitudes toward political participation. This is an interesting topic because public engagement and social capital play a crucial role in shaping the economy and democracy. We exploit a recent survey on the 1936�?1939 Spanish Civil War to shed light on this question. Our findings indicate that being a member of a family that suffered violence during the Civil War is related to a higher interest, knowledge and engagement in politics. These results stand in stark contrast to the common expectation that political violence leads to lower public engagement, while they are consistent with other studies focusing on the short�?term consequences of civil conflicts. Therefore, the legacy of political violence, far from creating political apathy, may be the higher involvement of citizens in politics.

‘No Land without a Lord’: Lordships, State Capacity, and Economic Development

This paper investigates the long-term consequences of delegation of governmental authority through the study of a pivotal local political institution in historical Europe: the lordship. I collect data on seigneurial jurisdictions for ancien-regime Spain and document a negative relationship between having been a seigneurial town in the 18th century and current economic development. To shed light on the causal effect, I focus on the distribution of lordships in the former Kingdom of Granada after its conquest by the Catholic Monarchs, which can be considered as conditionally random. The results confirm the negative effect of lordship found for the whole country: towns that shortly after the conquest were granted to nobles are relatively poorer today. In addition, I explore the mechanisms of persistence, with the results pointing to lower state capacity as a main explanatory factor. This finding is consistent with an interpretation of seigneurial jurisdictions as a privatization of the local government, which has historically hindered the application of central government policies and lowered the state’s infrastructural capacity in former manorial towns.

The Medieval Frontier Origins of a Country’s Economic Geography: The Case of Spain

This paper shows that Spain stands out in Europe with an anomalous settlement pattern characterized by a very low density in its southern half. Geographic factors and climatic conditions have low explanatory power to account for this anomaly, which points to history as an important cause behind it. I exploit a spatial discontinuity that was meaningful during the Christian colonization of central Spain in the Middle Ages to investigate the historical roots of this phenomenon. The findings suggest that medieval frontier insecurity heavily conditioned the colonization of the territory, resulting in a very sparse occupation of the affected region, a high degree of militarization, and a ranching orientation of the economy. The persistence in low settlement density since this early period is what explains the Spanish anomaly. Thus, this article shows the potential of historical frontiers to shape the economic geography of countries.This paper investigates the potential of frontiers to shape the economic geography of countries. I focus on the case of Spain to explore how historical frontier warfare affects the colonization of the territory and the distribution of the population across the space. Exploiting a spatial discontinuity in military insecurity during the Christian colonization of central Spain in the Middle Ages, my findings suggest that medieval frontier warfare heavily conditioned the settlement of the territory, resulting in a sparse occupation of the space, low settlement density and high population concentration. These initial features of the colonization process were already visible in the early 16th century and have persisted to this day, with potential negative consequences for economic development.This paper investigates the potential of frontiers to shape the economic geography of countries. I focus on the case of Spain to explore how historical frontier warfare affects the colonization of the territory and the distribution of the population across the space. Exploiting a spatial discontinuity in military insecurity during the Christian colonization of central Spain in the Middle Ages, my findings suggest that medieval frontier warfare heavily conditioned the settlement of the territory, resulting in a sparse occupation of the space, low settlement density and high population concentration. These initial features of the colonization process were already visible in the early 16th century and have persisted to this day, with potential negative consequences for economic development.

Spreading Civilizations: Ancient Colonialism and Economic Development Along the Mediterranean

This paper investigates the legacy of ancient colonialism (by the Phoenicians, Greeks and Etruscans) in shaping the modern-day population concentration and economic activity of the Mediterranean region. By combining historical data on ancient colonies and current data on population density and night light emission, we find that geographic areas colonised by these civilisations tend to have higher population concentration and economic activity in the present day. We also show that ancient colonialism affected the origin and evolution of the urban system of the Mediterranean.This paper investigates the long-term effects of ancient colonialism on economic development. In an early form of colonisation, the Phoenicians, Greeks and Etruscans spread around the Mediterranean from the 11 to the 6 centuries BCE transferring their superior technologies and institutions to new geographic areas. We find that geographic areas colonised by these civilisations are more developed in the present day. Our results hold after controlling for country fixed effects and splitting the sample by continent. Moreover, our findings are robust to the use of alternative measures and different historical data sources on ancient colonies. Overall, the results suggest that ancient colonialism along the Mediterranean left a positive economic legacy which persists today despite two millennia of historical turbulence.

What Do Street Names Tell Us? An Application to Great Britain's Streets

This note conducts an application of the methodology described in Oto-Peralías (2017) [What do street names tell us? The ‘city-text’ as socio-cultural data, Journal of Economic Geography] to the case of Great Britain. In that article, I propose that street names can be used as a rich source of information to create socio-cultural indicators at the regional and local level. To illustrate this methodology for the case of Great Britain, I create an indicator measuring the historical importance of Christianism and another measuring the cultural attachment to Great Britain. Interestingly, both street-name indicators are strongly correlated with the underlying cultural factors they are supposed to capture.

Legal Change Within Legal Traditions and Convergence

This chapter tries to determine whether there has been legal change within legal traditions by testing for mean differences between 2014 and 2006 scores for each of the legal and regulatory indicators studied. The evidence appears to indicate that there has been legal change, particularly in French civil law countries. This legal tradition has experienced an improvement in the following areas: law on the books as measured by the indices of strength of creditor rights and investor protection, depth of credit information, and in the regulatory burden associated with starting a business, registering a property, obtaining construction permits, paying taxes and trading across borders. Furthermore, it attempts to establish whether there is a legal origin effect on legal rules and regulatory outcomes both at the beginning and end of the period, and whether the relative position of legal traditions changed after the reform. The evidence indicates that in many areas such as creditor rights and investor protection, efficiency of debt enforcement, and in the regulatory burden linked to obtaining construction permits, paying taxes and trading across borders, the statistically significant differences relative to the British common law have diminished between 2006 and 2014; and in the case of starting a business these differences have vanished. This supports the existence of catching-up of the French civil law to the average legal and regulatory standards of the British common law.

A Model of Two Styles of Imperialism

This chapter provides a simple model of two styles of imperialism that integrates the colonial origin and endowment views. First, the ‘economically-oriented’ style is characterized by a strategy that aims to exploit colonial resources in order to satisfy the economic needs of the metropolis. Consequently, this style of imperialism renders a pragmatic empire, with purely economic goals and sensitive to the initial conditions of each territory, since the specific colonial policy required to maximize rents and satisfy metropolitan needs will depend on the particular characteristics of each colony. The ‘politically-oriented’ style of imperialism is characterized by a colonial strategy that consists of expanding the territorial domains of the colonizing power for non-economic reasons, such as the glory or prestige of the nation or religious-ideological motives. In this case, the lack of an economic calculus and the desire to impose political dominion lead to a uniform colonial policy insensitive to initial conditions. Importantly, colonial powers tend to adopt one style of imperialism or the other depending on their domestic circumstances. We argue that the specific conditions prevailing in Britain such as its insularity and liberal economic and political regimes favored the development of an ‘economically-oriented’ style of imperialism. In contrast, the centralist state tradition, the ideological heritage of the Great Revolution and military defeats led France to adopt a ‘politically-oriented’ style. These different models of imperialism were well reflected in the diverging characters of the British and French empires as well as in the different colonial policies adopted. Our model of colonial empires predicts that the endowment view is applicable to the ‘economically-oriented’ style of imperialism, but not to the ‘politically-oriented’ style. Therefore, we expect to observe a negative relationship between precolonial endowments and the current institutional level in the first case but not in the second.

Literature Review on the Effect of the Ease of Doing Business on Economic and Financial Outcomes

This chapter provides a brief review of the main studies analyzing the effect of the legal rules and regulatory indicators—used in our empirical analysis—on economic and financial outcomes, both from a macroeconomic (country-level) and microeconomic (firm-level or industry-level) perspectives. The studies are framed within the following legal and regulatory areas: research on (i) protecting minority investors, (ii) getting credit, (iii) enforcing contracts, (iv) resolving insolvency, (v) starting a business, (vi) registering property, (vii) dealing with construction permits, (viii) paying taxes, and (ix) trading across borders. The pioneering study in each area is presented first, which is followed by other studies within that area.

Sensitivity Analyses on the Effect of Legal Rules Variation on Economic and Financial Performance

This chapter presents several robustness checks so as to determine whether the lack of a clear-cut impact of legal rules and regulatory indicators on economic and financial performance holds for alternative legal indicators, some of which extend over lengthier periods than the Doing Business indicators. Other sensitivity analyses entail the use of alternative estimators such as the difference GMM estimator of Arellano and Bond (Rev Econ Stud 58(2):277–297) and the system GMM estimator of Arellano and Bover (J Econ 68(1):29–51). The lack of effect of legal rules and regulatory indicators on financial and economic performance may indicate the existence of a gap between intended legal and regulatory reforms and the reality on the ground.