This essay investigates the determinants of the growth performance of Africa. I start by illustrating a broader … institutional development. After reporting results from standard growth regressions, I analyze the role of Africa’s peculiar history … influence, in and out of Africa, of the slave trades. The essay ends with critical conclusions and suggestions for further …

determined by the initial gap. We obtain these results with 2SLS estimates where slavery is used as an instrument for the initial … gap. The excludability of slavery is preliminarily established by instrumenting it with the share of disembarked slaves … initial racial gap in education and that slavery affects growth indirectly through this channel. …

We investigate the impact of slavery on the current performances of the US economy. Over a cross section of counties …, we find that the legacy of slavery does not affect current income per capita, but does affect current income inequality …. Moreover, we find that the impact of slavery on current income inequality is determined by racial inequality. We test three …

Long-run trends in Africa’s well-being are provided on the basis of a new index of human development, alternative to … experienced in other developing regions. Within Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa has fallen steadily behind the North since mid-20th …

South Africa and variation in the intensity of this law to identify increases in wages for domestic workers and find no …

We explore the determinants of state fragility in sub-Saharan Africa. Controlling for a wide range of economic …