The Long-Term Effects of Africa's Slave Trades
Can part of Africa's current underdevelopment be explained by its slave trades? To explore this question, I use data from shipping records and historical documents reporting slave ethnicities to construct estimates of the number of slaves exported from each country during Africa's slave trades. I find a robust negative relationship between the number of slaves exported from a country and current economic performance. To better understand if the relationship is causal, I examine the historical evidence on selection into the slave trades and use instrumental variables. Together the evidence suggests that the slave trades had an adverse effect on economic development. (c) 2008 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology..
Year of publication: |
2008
|
---|---|
Authors: | Nunn, Nathan |
Published in: |
The Quarterly Journal of Economics. - MIT Press. - Vol. 123.2008, 1, p. 139-176
|
Publisher: |
MIT Press |
Saved in:
Online Resource
Saved in favorites
Similar items by person
-
Ruggedness: The blessing of bad geography in Africa
Nunn, Nathan, (2007)
-
Ruggedness: The Blessing of Bad Geography in Africa
Nunn, Nathan, (2012)
-
Commercial Imperialism? Political Influence and Trade During the Cold War
Easterly, William, (2010)
- More ...