was an undergraduate she heard about some economics research that reminded her of a recent trip to Peru. It was no idle daydream. The study, by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and James Robinson of the University of Chicago, argued that colonial institutions could determine economic performance today. Ms Dell wondered whether Peru’s history might explain its extreme poverty.
The colonial institution was the Spanish-imposed “mita” system in Peru and Bolivia, which between 1573 and 1812 forced a seventh of adult men from indigenous communities to work in silver and mercury mines. This was in place in some regions but not others, allowing Ms Dell to measure its effects. Her results supported the findings of Messrs Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson, that extractive institutions have pernicious and persistent effects.
Ms Dell then asked why the mita had such damaging effects. She showed that haciendas, or big agricultural estates, thrived outside mita areas, not inside them. Unequal land ownership was thought to have held back Latin American development. But Ms Dell argued that the alternative was worse. Hacienda owners may not have been benevolent, but they did have the power to lobby for public goods. That meant that places outside mita areas had decent roads. But those inside them did not, and had fewer means and incentives to invest.
The research formed Ms Dell’s master’s thesis and was published in a top journal in 2010. Though her broader body of research won her the medal, this paper, gushed the prize-giving committee, “beautifully” illustrates her work, which draws on history, and “very convincingly” pinpoints cause and effect. Now a professor at Harvard University, Ms Dell still explores the role of the state as an engine of development.
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