Data for: Potatoes, milk, and the Old World population boom

Abstract of associated article: This paper explores the role of two foods, potatoes and milk, in explaining the increase in economic development experienced throughout the Old World in the 18th and 19th centuries. Nunn and Qian (2011) show the introduction of the potato from the New World has a significant explanatory role for within country population and urbanization growth over this period. I expand on this by considering the role of milk consumption, which is hypothesized to be a complement in diet to potatoes due to a differential composition of essential nutrients. Using a country-level measure for the suitability of milk consumption, the frequency of lactase persistence, I show that the marginal effect of potatoes on post-1700 population and urbanization growth is positively related to milk consumption. As the frequency of milk consumption approaches unity, the marginal effect of potatoes more than doubles in magnitude compared to the baseline estimate of Nunn and Qian.

相关论文摘要：本文探讨了马铃薯与牛乳两种食物，在解释18至19世纪旧大陆经济发展水平提升过程中所发挥的作用。Nunn与Qian（2011）的研究表明，从新大陆引入的马铃薯，对同期各国国内的人口与城市化增长具有显著的解释力。本文通过考量牛乳消费的作用对该研究进行拓展：由于二者必需营养素的组成存在差异，牛乳被认为是马铃薯膳食的互补食品。本文采用国家级层面的牛乳消费适宜性指标——乳糖酶持久性频率——开展实证分析，结果显示，马铃薯对1700年之后人口与城市化增长的边际效应与牛乳消费呈正相关关系。当牛乳消费频率趋近于1时，马铃薯的边际效应相较于Nunn和Qian的基准估计值将提升一倍以上。