The International Labour Organisation was established in 1919 to address some of the biggest challenges affecting wage earners worldwide. The ILO introduced major conventions and recommendations targeted at improving the socio-economic conditions...
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Summaries
While sub-Saharan Africa has a poor and erratic record of economic growth over the long 20th century, its sustained expansion of education is beyond dispute. Average educational attainment increased from 0.2 years...
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Several recent studies have argued that human capital formation among elites is crucial to economic development – for example, resulting in a system of trading cities and merchants who coordinated long-distance trade...
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As vaccines for Covid-19 become more readily available, the next challenge will be ensuring uptake of vaccines in developing countries. Despite numerous improvements in health technology and access, health interventions in developing...
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Colonizer Identity and Free Trade in Africa It has often been claimed that the structure of export trade between Africa and Europe during the colonial period depended on the colonizer's identity, with...
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Based on what we know about Uganda’s pre-colonial and colonial history (Reid 2017), how much inequality should we expect? Uganda’s economy was predicated on smallholder production of export crops – cotton and...
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The Persistent Influence of Chiefs Our focus on chiefs, as opposed to the formal state, is a notable departure from much of the current literature on the determinants of corruption. Even though...
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Research examining the origins and impact of colonial investments on African economic development is scarce, especially if we exclude the growing literature on the long-term educational, economic, and political effects of missionaries....
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Although it is undeniable that overall welfare was reduced because of colonialism, the evolution of some dimensions of welfare such as education, health or income has given rise to some debate. The...
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Scholars, opinion makers, and journalists hold polarizing views on Africa's development prospects. Likewise, professionals and global investors appear either bearish or bullish on Africa's economic potential. These diverging views stem from how...
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In 2016, the average tax revenue as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) was 26.15 percent for OECD countries, but only 15.47 percent for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Some scholars attribute SSA...
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In the 1960s, one of Africa’s economic and political predicaments was thought to be its overdeveloped public sector elite, which dwarfed the few members of a genuinely African commercial elite. Scholars argued...
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Introduction Analyzing post-slavery labour markets in sub-Saharan Africa, economic historians have stressed the abundance of land relative to labour (e.g. Austin 2019). In such conditions, if an employer wanted prospective labourers to...
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Currently Africa, accounting in May 2020 for only 0.8% of confirmed cases and 0.6% of deaths worldwide, is marginal to global analysis of coronavirus. This situation seems likely to change, given the...
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Long-run Effects of Forced Resettlement Under Apartheid South Africa's minority white population elected the Afrikaner-led National Party in 1948, marking the official start of the apartheid regime that would be in power...
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African stock exchanges Despite the continued resurgence in African economic history, the output of business and corporate historiography on Africa’s financial infrastructure lags considerably behind the actual contribution of the financial sector...
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European settlement and African living standards Ongoing scholarly debate cites extractive colonial institutions as a root cause of Africa’s comparatively low economic development. The role of institutions is emphasized particularly in historical...
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A large body of research has identified a negative correlation between fertility levels and population densities in pre-industrial societies – past and present (Doveri 2000). Fertility declines as land becomes scarce. A...
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Trade Monopsonies and African Economic Development Under French colonial rule, trade monopsonies were often established to reduce prices paid to African agricultural producers below competitive prices and increase the profit margin of...
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Fiscal capacity and forced labor Ongoing scholarly debate about the connections between taxation, state building, and long-term economic development, has revitalized and globalized the study of historical tax systems (Bräutigam et al....
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The level of agricultural productivity in Africa has been an almost perennial topic in academic research. Scholars that have analyzed the historical productivity of African agriculture have generally believed that the prospects...
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The scramble for Africa stands out as a remarkable feat of European imperialism, and its motives and timing have been long debated (Pakenham 1992). In less than two decades (1884–1898), the lion’s...
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This PhD thesis analyzes and compares the development of the coffee sector on both sides of Lake Kivu, in the Eastern Congo and Western Rwanda, during the colonial period. The Kivu region...
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One of the central questions in African and global economic history is how West Africa contributed to economies outside the region. The debate has often focused on West Africa’s contribution to the...
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The arrival of Christian missionaries and the receptivity of African societies to formal education prompted a genuine schooling revolution during the colonial era. The bulk of primary education in the British colonies...
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In 1924, John Maynard Keynes complained that ‘perhaps the limit of the absurdity to which the Trustee Acts can lead, was reached early in this year when £2,000,000 was borrowed by Southern...
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The capacity of the state to collect taxes determines the scope for public goods provision, which in turn has consequences for economic development and well-being. Many post-colonial states in Africa, including Mozambique,...
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The impact of European trade and colonialism on the economic development of West Africa has been long debated. According to Moitt (1989), peanut production in the regions of Cayor and Baol (Senegal)...
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There is a big debate in African Economic History on the long-term economic consequences of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Did it only impede growth, distort trust and retard state formation, or did...
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In recent years, there has been a revived interest in the study of historical inequality (Milanovic 2016, Piketty 2014). This paper contributes to the literature with a study of long-term trends in...
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In recent years, a proliferation of studies has emerged that aim to quantify and assess the effects of weather extremes on various social and economic outcomes, including conflict, crime, hunger, and mortality...
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The Central African Copperbelt offers a fascinating case for a comparative study of colonial institutional development. After the discovery of copper deposits in the first decade of the twentieth century, European investors...
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Recent studies have uncovered long-term trends in welfare development in sub-Saharan Africa. But what do we know about the living standards of the large majority of rural dwellers in colonial Africa? Do...
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A few years ago, I took my graduate Economics students to the Cape Town Archives. Most of them had never been there, and it was fun to show them the original manuscripts...
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European settler expansion in Africa has been defined by Mosley as "colonisation of underdeveloped areas by European producers who became economically dependent on the indigenous population" (1983, p. 237). Europeans who decided...
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How have households in developing countries historically coped with shocks to their labor supply? Time is often the most valuable resource available to poor households, and its allocation across labor and other...
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Political institutions and the balance of political power strongly influence the evolution of economic institutions, making them important for economic growth. The nature of political institutions and the distribution of political power...
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Introduction When discussing currency matters, colonial officials often observed that Africans had no pockets as an explanation for Africans’ use of strings of cowrie shells or beads as money carried around their...
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Do infrastructure investments have the potential to transform Africa’s economic geography? Today, Africa suffers a massive infrastructure deficit (Calderón and Servén 2010). The World Bank estimates that sub-Saharan Africa has fewer than...
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Belief in witchcraft, broadly defined as the ability to use supernatural techniques to harm others or acquire wealth, is a deep-rooted cultural phenomenon which still represents a salient feature of daily life...
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