Is it possible that political reform may have a causal influence on economic outcomes? Sure.
Does this study prove and—more importantly- rigorously quantify this influence? No.
The statistics are simply not powerful enough to yield such strong conclusions.
The effect size is small, there is clear garden-of-forking-paths going on (only finding a real effect on urbanization), one has to mediate for a simple west-east axis. It is also highly suspicious that the effect only starts to take effect after 1850. etc etc etc
This could be pure noise. The study does not adequately reject the null hypothesis.
Is it possible that political reform may have a causal influence on economic outcomes? Sure.
Does this study prove and—more importantly- rigorously quantify this influence? No.
The statistics are simply not powerful enough to yield such strong conclusions.
The effect size is small, there is clear garden-of-forking-paths going on (only finding a real effect on urbanization), one has to mediate for a simple west-east axis. It is also highly suspicious that the effect only starts to take effect after 1850. etc etc etc
This could be pure noise. The study does not adequately reject the null hypothesis.
Does this study prove it? Maybe not. But if there are confounding effects, industrialization ain’t it.