Introduction to Modern Economic Growth indicate that, as claimed in the text, total population in Asia has been consistently greater than in Western Europe over this time period The geography hypothesis has many proponents In addition to Montesquieu, Machiavelli was an early proponent of the importance of climate and geographic characteristics Marshall (1890), Kamarck (1976), and Myrdal (1986) are among the economists who have most clearly articulated various different versions of the geography hypothesis It has more recently been popularized by Sachs (2000, 2001), Bloom and Sachs (1998) and Gallup and Sachs (2001) Diamond (1997) offers a more sophisticated version of the geography hypothesis, where the availability of different types of crops and animals, as well as the axes of communication of continents, influence the timing of settled agriculture and thus the possibility of developing complex societies Diamond’s thesis is therefore based on geographic differences, but also relies on such institutional factors as intervening variables Scholars emphasizing the importance of various types of institutions in economic development include John Locke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Arthur Lewis, Douglass North and Robert Thomas The recent economics literature includes many models highlighting the importance of property rights, for example, Skaperdas (1992), Tornell and Velasco (1992), Acemoglu (1995), Grossman and Kim (1995, 1996), Hirsleifer (2001) and Dixit (2004) Other models emphasize the importance of policies within a given institutional framework Well-known examples of this approach include Perotti (1993), Saint-Paul and Verdier (1993), Alesina and Rodrik (1994), Persson and Tabellini (1994), Ades and Verdier (1996), Krusell and Rios-Rull (1999), and Bourguignon and Verdier (2000) There is a much smaller literature on endogenous institutions and the effect of these institutions on economic outcomes Surveys of this work can be found in Acemoglu (2007) and Acemoglu and Robinson (2006) The literature on the effect of economic institutions on economic growth is summarized and discussed in greater detail in Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2006), which also provides an overview of the empirical literature on the topic We will return to many of these issues and Part of the book The importance of religion for economic development is most forcefully argued in Max Weber’s work, for example (1930, 1958) Many other scholars since then have picked up on this idea and have argued about the importance of religion Prominent 209