Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

DOI

10.1111/1468-0106.12419

Publication Title

Pacific Economic Review

Volume

29

Issue

1

Pages

26-43

Abstract

The mutual dependence between national integration and institution building is established in a formal model. It is shown that a decrease in transportation costs, but not necessarily an increase in population size, reduces the equilibrium number of states and the adoption of rule-based institutions. With endogenous transportation costs or endogenous population size, the unification process can feed on itself. The model is illustrated by the state of Qin's unification of China in 221 BC. During this process of national integration, transformations from relation-based governance to rule-based governance happened.

Rights

© 2023 The Author.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Original Publication Citation

Zhou, H. (2024). National integration and institution building. Pacific Economic Review, 29(1), 26-43. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0106.12419

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