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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Summaries
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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