Replication Data for: Why Was the Wheel (Not) Used in the Andes? Wagon Transport Adoption in Nineteenth-Century Colombia

This is the replication package for “Why Was the Wheel (Not) Used in the Andes? A Hypothesis Explaining the Slow Adoption of Wagon Transport and Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Colombia.” The package includes the data, code, and documentation necessary to reproduce the analyses, tables, and figures reported in the article. The study examines the slow adoption of wagon transport in the Andes through a threshold technology-adoption model calibrated with historical and physiological evidence on human, mule, and wagon transport costs. The data refer primarily to nineteenth-century Colombia and include information on transportation routes, route characteristics, traffic demand, energy-based transport costs, and the comparison between animal-pack transport and wagon-road transport. The replication files allow users to reproduce the model calibration, the construction of key variables, and the empirical and quantitative exercises used to evaluate why wagon transport became economically viable only after transport demand crossed a threshold sufficient to offset the fixed costs of wagon-road construction.