The wealth of subnations: Geography, institutions, and within-country development

I study determinants of economic development in a new dataset covering 1867 subnational regions from 101 countries, focusing on within-country effects of geography and institutions. Several geographic factors have significant explanatory power for within-country differences in per-capita GDP, including terrain ruggedness, tropical climate, ocean access, temperature range, storm risk, and natural resources such as oil, diamonds, or iron. Institutions have a significant positive effect on income among subnational regions with greater autonomy, suggesting that strong subnational institutions enhance development when not dominated by national institutions.