Divide et praegressio : the effects of Hadrian’s wall on Britain’s longlasting development

Abstract

Did Roman presence have long-term impacts? I exploit plausibly exogenous differences across the Roman frontier in Northern England. Through a Regression Discontinuity Desing (RDD), I show that zones just South of the Roman wall still have significant advantage in luminosity and connectivity than those just at the North, and possible differences in population and human capital indicators. I argue that this is due to a legacy of infrastructure and urban centers left by the Romans, which influenced progress through all following centuries. To prove this, I show the effect of Roman rule on a number of intermediate outcomes from a rich amount of datasets. Almost all of them were statistically more positive South of the wall, although some differences appear to fade out after the Industrial Revolution period. All these results are robust to bandwidth, polynomial degree and numerous other tests.