The primary focus of this dissertation is on information, its production and dissemination in society. In the first chapter, I explore the consequences of an increase in the number of newspapers on the quantity and quality of news provided and, ultimately, changes in political participation, using a new panel of local newspaper presence and political turnout in France from 1945 to 2012. My results shed new light on the role played by consumers' heterogeneity and increasing returns to scale in news production, and have implications for the study of the relationship between media competition and political participation. / Economics

Les comportements politiques et sociaux tels que la participation politique, la confiance en autrui, l'engagement collectif, la prévention en santé, ou les attitudes vis à vis de la contraception, peuvent persister pendant de très nombreuses années. Cette thèse présente des travaux qui explorent et quantifient rigoureusement des instances de persistance dans ces comportements, en utilisant de nouvelles sources de données historiques et contemporaines. Les travaux présentés dans cette thèse contribuent à la littérature de trois manières différentes. En premier lieu, ils présentent une nouvelle base de données sur la présence des missionnaires chrétiens en Afrique et leurs investissements. Cette base de données est unique en ce qu'elle est entièrement géocodée et présente des données à un niveau de désagrégation très fin. En deuxième lieu, ces travaux mettent en avant de manière originale des canaux de persistance dans le développement qui ne sont pas attribuables aux différences institutionnelles. En troisième lieu, en analysant la marge intensive de la diversité, ces travaux proposent aussi une nouvelle manière d'aborder la question de l'endogénéité dans l'étude du rôle économique de la diversité des origines dans une société. La première partie de cette thèse est un travail sur l'effet persistant sur le développement de l'activité missionnaire en Afrique subsaharienne. 
La deuxième partie de cette thèse étudie les conditions sociales qui font que les différences d'origine peuvent devenir une barrière à la réussite économique aux États-Unis. / Individual and social behaviors, such as voting patterns, the ability to trust others, participation in the community, health-seeking behaviors, or attitudes towards contraception, can persist over many years. Relying on new historical and contemporary data sources, the works compiled in this thesis aim at explaining and quantifying rigorously instances of persistence in behaviors and preferences. This work presents three contributions to the literature. Firstly, it compiles a new micro-level geocoded historical datasource on missionary activity in sub-Saharan Africa. Secondly, it has elucidated, in original ways, channels of persistence in development, which are not attributable to formal institutions. Thirdly, it has analyzed the intensive margin of diversity, providing a new way to address the endogeneity issue in the study of the role of diversity on income. 
The first part of the thesis is a work on the long-lasting influence of missionary activity in sub-Saharan Africa. I present there the research I have conducted with Julia Cagé. It relies a new database that we constructed and geocoded based on the Geography and Atlas of Protestant missions. This research is developed in the two first chapters of the thesis. The second part of this thesis studies the social conditions under which ancestry differences act as a persistent barrier for individual earnings in the United States. The United States is a natural choice to study the persistent effect of ancestry on income, as this is a country that was populated by subsequent waves of migration from different origins during a relatively short period of time. Moreover, the American Census Bureau has recorded data about ancestries since the 1850s.

Os estudos contemporâneos no campo da Arqueologia do Colonialismo têm se dedicado ao entendimento das complexas relações coloniais entre povos nativos e europeus, investigando tanto o papel agentivo quanto a história de longa duração dos povos indígenas. Assim, discussões relativas ao uso de conceitos como hibridação, mimetismo e ambivalência, dentre outros oriundos dos estudos pós-coloniais, têm permeado as pesquisas dedicadas às identidades e materialidades em contextos multiculturais. No entanto, devemos nos atentar para as implicações políticas de tais conceitos, e confrontar narrativas coloniais tradicionalmente centradas nas ideias de homogeneidade cultural ou, ainda, perda identitária de povos nativos. A presente tese, através da intersecção de três áreas - arqueologia, antropologia e história -, discute a aplicabilidade desses conceitos em contextos de interação entre povos tupiniquins pré-coloniais (e possíveis descendentes) e colonizadores portugueses no litoral sul de São Paulo, entre os séculos XVI e XIX. O objetivo é entender a variabilidade de práticas cerâmicas ao longo do tempo e a apropriação de tecnologias e práticas estrangeiras - marcadas pela ambivalência - focando-se no conceito da Arqueologia da Persistência. Para tanto, a tese levanta uma série de questões em torno da aplicabilidade do conceito de hibridação, enquanto ferramenta para entender situações de interação cultural. Deste modo, a comparação entre as práticas cerâmicas tupiniquim pré-coloniais e coloniais, e as práticas cerâmicas de tecnologia combinada - indígena, portuguesa e africana -, bem como as vasilhas identificadas nos séculos XIX e XX, permitiram traçar a persistência de um habitus cerâmico tupiniquim, particularmente no litoral sul de São Paulo, num período histórico de longuíssima duração. Tal dado é extremamente relevante, uma vez que nos permite refletir sobre a história desses povos, contudo, sem uma divisão estanque e dicotômica entre pré-história versus história ou, ainda, entre continuidade versus mudança. Ao contrário, nos permite estabelecer conexões entre passado e presente, principalmente através da associação entre práticas sociais, tanto no âmbito da micro-escala, como nos processos históricos de longa duração. / Contemporary studies in the field of Archeology of Colonialism have been devoted to understanding the complex colonial relations between native and European peoples, investigating both the agentive role and the indigenous peoples\' long-term history. Thus, discussions about the use of concepts such as hybridization, mimicry and ambivalence, among others from postcolonial studies, have permeated the research on identities and materialities in multicultural contexts. However, we must pay attention to the political implications of such concepts, and confront colonial narratives traditionally centered on the ideas cultural homogeneity, or even identity loss of native peoples. Through the intersection of three areas - archeology, anthropology and history - this thesis discusses the applicability of these concepts in contexts of interaction between pre-colonial tupiniquim peoples (and their possible descendants) and Portuguese settlers on the southern coast of São Paulo state between the 15th and the 19th centuries. The goal here is to understand the variability of ceramic practices through time and the appropriation of foreign technologies and practices - marked by ambivalences - focusing on the concept of Archeology of Persistence. In order to do so, this thesis raises a series of questions about the applicability of the concept of hybridization as a tool to understand such relations of cultural interaction. Thus, the comparison between pre-colonial and colonial tupiniquim ceramic practices, and the combined technology ceramic practices - indigenous, Portuguese, and African - as well as vessels identified in the 19th and 20th centuries, allowed us to trace the persistence of a tupiniquim ceramic habitus, particularly on the southern coast of São Paulo state, in a historical period of very long duration. This fact is extremely relevant, given that it allows us to reflect on the history of these peoples without a narrow and dichotomous division between pre-history versus history, or between continuity versus change. On the contrary, it allows us to establish connections between past and present, mainly through the association between social practices, both within the micro-scale and long historical processes.

[pt] Neste artigo, nos concentramos num canal através do qual a capacidade do Estado explica as diferenças no desenvolvimento econômico: o efeito sobre as firmas. Seguindo a literatura de persistência histórica nos analisamos o efeito da capacidade jurídica histórica, uma dimensão crucial da capacidade do Estado, sobre o tamanho e a estrutura das firmas ao longo do tempo. Esta relação é estudada para o caso peruano. Usamos dados dum censo histórico da administração do Estado realizado em 1793 para analisar o efeito persistente da capacidade legal e, especificamente, dos tribunais coloniais, sobre os indicadores de desenvolvimento das firmas históricas e atuais. Mostramos evidências dum efeito positivo persistente e significativo da capacidade jurídica histórica sobre várias dimensões do desenvolvimento (tamanho e produtividade) e estrutura das firmas (grau de integração do mercado). Além disso, coletamos informações sobre raça e alfabetização de um censo populacional nacional realizado em 1876 e informações sobre a distribuição inicial de empresas do registro de impostos em 1910. Nossas evidências são robustas a essas variáveis importantes destacadas na literatura, como capital humano, distribuição inicial de empresas e heterogeneidade racial. A presença dos tribunais coloniais parece ser a dimensão mais importante da capacidade jurídica. Em terceiro lugar, analisamos o efeito do colonial sobre a atual presença de capacidade legal como um potencial canal de persistência. Observamos que ter capacidade legal no passado afetou o custo relativo de investimentos subsequentes na capacidade do Estado durante o período republicano. Finalmente, temos evidências preliminares sobre a evolução diferente das normas formais e informais. Municípios com capacidade legal colonial afrouxaram os atritos financeiros e exigiram menos crédito informal. Ao mesmo tempo, não há diferenças significativas nas condições para obter uma licença em funcionamento, uma característica relacionada à capacidade geral do Estado. / [en] In this paper, we focus on one channel through which state capacity explains differences in economic development: it s effect over firms. We rely on the literature of historical persistence to analyze the effect of historical legal capacity, a crucial dimension of state capacity, over the size and structure of firms through time. This relationship is studied for the Peruvian case. We use rich data from a historical census of the state administration carried in 1793 to analyze the persistent effect of legal capacity, and specifically from colonial courts, over historical and current firms development indicators. We show evidence of a persistent and significant positive effect of historical legal capacity over several dimensions of firms development (size and productivity) and structure (degree of market integration). Also, we collect information on race and literacy from a national population census held in 1876, and information on the initial distribution of firms from the registry of taxes in 1910s. Our evidence is robust to these important variables highlighted in the literature like human capital, initial distribution of firms, and racial heterogeneity. The presence of colonial courts appears to be the most important dimension of legal capacity. Third, we analyze the effect of colonial over the current presence of legal capacity as a potential channel of persistence. We observe that having legal capacity in the past affected the relative cost of subsequent investments in state capacity during the republic period. Finally, we have preliminary evidence on the different evolution of formal and informal norms. Municipalities with colonial legal capacity have loosened financial frictions and demand less informal credit. At the same time, there are no significant differences in the conditions to obtain a functioning license, a feature related to broad state capacity.