Dalgaard and Selaya in the Review of Economic Studies

“Climate and the Emergence of Global Income Differences”, Carl-Johan Dalgaard and Pablo Selaya’s paper coauthored with Thomas B. Andersen of the University of Southern Denmark, appears in the current issue of the Review of Economic Studies (October 2016).

Abstract: The latitude gradient in comparative development is a striking fact: as one moves away from the equator, economic activity rises. While this regularity is well known, it is not well understood. Perhaps the strongest correlate of (absolute) latitude is the intensity of ultraviolet radiation (UV-R), which epidemiological research has shown to be a cause of a wide range of diseases. We establish that UV-R is strongly and negatively correlated with economic activity, both across and within countries. We propose and test a mechanism that links UV-R to current income differences via the impact of disease ecology on the timing of the take-off to sustained growth.

A blog about the paper is available at the Oxford University Press’s blog: http://blog.oup.com/2016/03/climate-inequality-of-nations/