Agricultural Transition and the Adoption of Primitive Technology

This paper tests Jared Diamond’s influential theory that an earlier transition from a hunter-gatherer society to agricultural production induces higher levels of technology adoption. Using a proxy for the geographic diffusion barriers of Neolithic technology to isolate the exogenous component of the timing of agricultural transition, the results provide some support for this hypothesis. The findings indicate that countries that experienced earlier transitions to agriculture are more capable of adopting new technologies in 1000 BC and 1 AD, even after controlling for continent effects and geographic factors. Similar results are obtained for the 1500 AD estimates. However, the significant impact of agricultural transition does not hold when we control for the effects of early political institutions and cultural diffusion barriers, suggesting that these are plausible mechanisms through which early agrarian development affects the levels of technological sophistication in 1500 AD.