degree of inequality in wealth, human capital, and political power in accounting for how fundamental economic institutions … political influence and access to economic opportunities. The clear implication is that institutions should not be presumed to …

Various arguments have been used to explain Sub-Saharan Africa's economic decline. We find that a stress on investments … poverty alleviation; and that the constraints imposed by Sub-Saharan Africa's human and physical geography are not core …

can be a critical basis for building better institutions. Third, Africa is "cosmopolitan." Africans are the most …Despite the past centuries' economic setbacks and challenges, are there reasons for optimism about Africa's economic … sets of unrecognized "latent assets." First, success in African society is talent driven and Africa has experienced high …

We investigate the role of deeply-rooted pre-colonial ethnic institutions in shaping comparative regional development … adjacent ethnic homelands with different legacies of pre-colonial political institutions …

-specific pre-colonial institutions in shaping comparative regional development in Africa. We utilize information on the spatial … groups in different countries subjecting identical cultures to different country-level institutions. Our regression …

Conventional wisdom proposes deep historical roots for authoritarianism in Africa: either colonial "decentralized … communities, which constrained precolonial rulers. Colonizers largely left constrained institutions in place given budget … implications, we compiled two original datasets that measure precolonial institutions and British colonial administrations around …

relationship between potential settler mortality and institutions. First, there is a general concern that there are high mortality … versions of his other critiques. His second argument that all the data from Latin America and much of the data from Africa …

could fundamentally improve the quality of public institutions and, as a result, transform economics and politics in Nigeria …