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The Celestial Empire: solar eclipses, political legitimacy, and economic performance in historical China

The Celestial Empire: solar eclipses, political legitimacy, and economic performance in... We exploit a unique historical experiment to study how changes in political legitimacy affect economic performance. In historical China, solar eclipses were interpreted as Heaven's wrath incurred by wrongdoings of the ruling class, signaling a decline in the incumbent's legitimacy. Using an original dataset covering over 2000 years, we document that when total solar eclipses occurred, climate shocks had a greater negative impact on economic performance. The key mechanism appears to be that total eclipses significantly intensified the effect of climate shocks on civil conflict. Our findings thus highlight the importance of political legitimacy during periods of economic downturn. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Cliometrica Springer Journals

The Celestial Empire: solar eclipses, political legitimacy, and economic performance in historical China

Sun, Chengjiu; Li, Hongfei
Cliometrica , Volume OnlineFirst – May 28, 2023
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39 pages

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Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2023. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
ISSN
1863-2505
eISSN
1863-2513
DOI
10.1007/s11698-023-00270-3
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

We exploit a unique historical experiment to study how changes in political legitimacy affect economic performance. In historical China, solar eclipses were interpreted as Heaven's wrath incurred by wrongdoings of the ruling class, signaling a decline in the incumbent's legitimacy. Using an original dataset covering over 2000 years, we document that when total solar eclipses occurred, climate shocks had a greater negative impact on economic performance. The key mechanism appears to be that total eclipses significantly intensified the effect of climate shocks on civil conflict. Our findings thus highlight the importance of political legitimacy during periods of economic downturn.

Journal

Cliometrica – Springer Journals

Published: May 28, 2023

Keywords: Political legitimacy; Solar eclipse; Economic performance; Climate shocks; Civil conflict; N15; P48; Q54

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