Imperialism and Global Divergent Development Paths: A Very Long-Run Empirical Approach

This article introduces a 500-year econometric model that investigates the role of modern imperialism in creating and maintaining international development disparities. The article contributes to the literature that studies global inequalities within the world-system and long-term historical contexts. The novel contribution of this article is a rigorous econometric examination of the center–periphery model of Dependency Theory. Utilizing OLS, 2SLS, and GMM econometric models with cross-sectional data from 127 countries spanning over 500 years, the article provides robust empirical evidence that modern imperialism, in its feudal, colonial, and neo-colonial forms, has been a primary force in creating and sustaining global divergent development paths over the last five centuries. By empirically demonstrating the significant influence of imperialism on the development trajectories of both imperial centers and peripheries over the last half-millennium, the study challenges the prevalent notion that national development is primarily dependent on domestic institutional quality exogenous to foreign and global systemic forces.