Research and data sources

The records and their limitations are supplied in the game. Original papers are optional unless assigned. The country data were accessed on 30 October 2026.

World Bank: GDP per capita, PPP
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD

World Bank: Worldwide Governance Indicators
https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/worldwide-governance-indicators/documentation

Nunn and Puga: geographic data archive
https://diegopuga.org/data/rugged/

Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2002), Reversal of Fortune
https://economics.mit.edu/sites/default/files/publications/reversal-of-fortune.pdf

Sachs (2003), Institutions Don’t Rule
https://www.nber.org/papers/w9490

Bleakley (2010), Malaria Eradication in the Americas
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3810960/

Cutler et al. (2010), Early-Life Malaria Exposure and Adult Outcomes
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.2.2.72

Glaeser et al. (2004), Do Institutions Cause Growth?
https://www.nber.org/papers/w10568

Acemoglu (2025), Institutions, Technology, and Prosperity
https://shapingwork.mit.edu/research/institutions-technology-and-prosperity/

UNDP: the human-development approach
https://hdr.undp.org/about/human-development

GDP and rule-of-law observations are for 2024. Geography uses the Nunn–Puga archive. Historical reversal and campaign studies retain their own time windows, populations and outcomes. The cover illustration is a conceptual invented atlas, not a data chart.