Dongwoo Yoo

Maps, which record spatial information, are critical for all human activities. This paper aims to evaluate the impact of mapping on economic development. Military leaders need maps for the planning and execution of movement, combat, accommodation and supply. Thus, maps have long been considered as military secrets. However, mapping was also critical for civilian and cadastral (i.e. land tax) purposes. After realizing the value of maps for land taxation, European countries collected more geodetic data for cadastral purposes and linked those data to military topographic maps. In sharp contrast, the principle of military secrecy in mapping still pervades in many developing countries to this day. In most Latin American countries, the military forces hold the legislated national monopoly of mapping services. The military is able to help finance itself by charging rather high prices for its mapping services. Many cases across the world suggest that mapping, especially cadastral mapping, i...

Several studies link modern economic performance to institutions transplanted by European colonizers and here we extend this line of research to Asia. Japan imposed its system of well-defined property rights in land on some of its Asian colonies, including Korea, Taiwan and Palau. In 1939 Japan began to survey and register private land in its island colonies, an effort that was completed in Palau but interrupted elsewhere by World War II. Within Micronesia robust economic development followed only in Palau where individual property rights were well defined. Second, we show that well-defined property rights in Korea and Taiwan secured land taxation and enabled farmers to obtain bank loans for capital improvements, principally irrigation systems. Our analytical model predicts that high costs of creating an ownership updating system and a citizen identity system discourage a short-sighted government from implementing these crucial components, the absence of which gradually makes land r...

Comparative studies have suggested that the British colonization is more beneficial than those of France and other colonizers. It is argued that the British cultures and institutions contributed to stable politics and robust economic development of its colonies. However, evidence is still inconclusive because a controlled experiment is very difficult in social science. Vanuatu – a Pacific island – provides an excellent experimental setting for testing the argument. Britain and France established a joint government, the British government, and the French government, which lasted from 1906 until 1980, in the same territory. Local people could choose whether to be tried under the British common law or the French civil law. Nationals of one country could set up corporations under the laws of the other. The case of Vanuatu suggests that political indicators are in favor of Britain, but economic indicators are in favor of France. The French dominated areas have been more developed than th...

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According to the incremental reform hypothesis, constitutions are rarely adopted whole cloth; thus the starting point, scope for bargaining, and number of reforms, jointly determine the trajectory of constitutional history. We test the relevance of this theory for Africa by analyzing the formation and reform of the independence constitutions negotiated and adopted during the 1950s and early 1960s. We find historical evidence that independence occurred incrementally and that the African countries that experienced the fewest constitutional moments and narrowest domain of bargaining after independence have better contemporary institutions than states that began with less restrictive constitutional rules and experienced more constitutional moments.