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Introduction to Modern Economic Growth a spurious relationship between latitude and income per capita However, once economic institutions are properly controlled for, these relationships go away and there appears to be no causal effect of geography on prosperity today (though geography may have been important historically in shaping economic institutions) 4.4.5 Culture, Colonial Identity and Economic Development One might think that culture may have played an important role in the colonial experience, since Europeans not only brought new institutions, but also their own “cultures” European culture might have affected the economic development of former European colonies through three different channels First, as already mentioned above, cultures may be systematically related to the national identity of the colonizing power For example, the British may have implanted a “good” Anglo-Saxon culture into colonies such as Australia and the United States, while the Spanish may have condemned Latin America by endowing it with an Iberian culture Second, Europeans may have had a culture, work ethic or set of beliefs that were conducive to prosperity Finally, Europeans also brought different religions with different implications for prosperity Many of these hypotheses have been suggested as explanations for why Latin America, with its Roman Catholic religion and Iberian culture, is poor relative to the Anglo-Saxon Protestant North America However, the econometric evidence in Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2001) is not consistent with any of these views either Similar to the evidence related to geographical variables, the econometric strategy discussed above suggests that, once the effect of economic institutions is taken into account, neither the identity of the colonial power, nor the contemporary fraction of Europeans in the population, nor the proportions of the populations of various religions appear to have a direct effect on economic growth and income per capita These econometric results are supported by historical examples Although no Spanish colony has been as successful economically as British colonies such as the United States, many former British colonies, such as those in Africa, India and Bangladesh, are poor today It is also clear that the British in no way simply re-created British institutions in their colonies For example, by 1619 the North American colony of Virginia had a representative assembly with universal male 197