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Prison Labor : The Price of Prisons and the Lasting Effects of Incarceration

Archibong, Belinda; Obikili, Nonso - 2021

Institutions of justice, like prisons, can be used to serve economic and other extrajudicial interests, with lasting deleterious effects. We study the effects on incarceration when prisoners are used primarily as a source of labor using evidence from British colonial Nigeria. We digitized...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013249422

Future challenges in measuring Africa's past: Lessons from estimating GDP for the Gold Coast, 1891-1954

Jerven, Morten - 2012

There has been a recent surge in research on long term African development. For this research agenda to be fruitful and its theories, it is crucial to have consistent estimates of economic change. This paper contributes with a new GDP time series for Ghana, 1891-1954. The series implies a...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012624352

Colonialism and development in Africa

Heldring, Leander; Robinson, James A. - 2013

In this paper we evaluate the impact of colonialism on development in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the world context …, colonialism had very heterogeneous effects, operating through many mechanisms, sometimes encouraging development sometimes … the colonial period, but also to take a view on what might have happened without colonialism and also to take into account …

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012624354

Slavery, Statehood and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Bezemer, Dirk; Bolt, Jutta; Lenzink, Robert - 2012

This paper addresses the long-term impact of Sub-Saharan Africa's indigenous systems of slavery on its political and economic development, based on an analytical survey of the literature and data collected from anthropological records. We develop a theory to account for this based on the...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012624355

Climate Shocks and Conflict: Evidence from Colonial Nigeria

Papaioannou, Kostados J. - 2014

This paper offers a historical micro-level analysis of the impact of climatic shocks on the incidence of conflict in colonial Nigeria (1912–1945). Primary historical sources on court cases, prisoners and homicides are used to construct an index of socio-political conflict using principal...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012624366

The Curious Incident of the Franc in the Gambia: Floating Exchange Rates and the British Imperial Monetary System in the 1920s

Gardner, Leigh - 2014

In 1922, the British colonial administration in the Gambia demonetized the French five franc coin, which had been legal tender since 1843. The cost of the demonetization was equal to a year's revenue, and undermined the stable fiscal position built up over previous decades. The floating exchange...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012624368

Colonial Origins of the Threefold Reality of Mozambique: fiscal capacity and labour systems

Alexopoulou, Kleoniki; Juif, Dacil - 2015

The question whether institutions in Africa were shaped by the metropolitan identity of the colonizer or by local conditions is lively debated in the African economic history literature. In this paper we contribute to this debate by revealing regional differences in tax capacity in the...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012624370

Missions, Education and Conversion in Colonial Africa

Meier zu Selhausen, Felix - 2019

This chapter traces the origins and long-term development of African mass-education in colonial sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, it addresses the unique role of Christian missions in prompting a genuine schooling revolution and explores the comparative educational expansion across colonies and...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012624397

Educational Gender Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Long-term Perspective

Baten, Joerg; de Haas, Michiel; Kempter, Elisabeth; … - 2020

To what extent was the 20th century schooling revolution in sub-Saharan Africa shared equally between men and women? We examine trajectories of educational gender inequality over the 20th century, using census data from 21 African countries and applying a birth-cohort approach. We present three...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012624403

Income Inequality under Colonial Rule: Evidence from French Algeria, Cameroon, Tunisia, and Vietnam and Comparisons with British Colonies 1920-1960

Alvaredo, Facundo; Cogneau, Denis; Piketty, Thomas - 2020

In this article we assess income inequality across French and British colonial empires between 1920 and 1960. For the first time, income tax tabulations are exploited to assess the case studies of French Algeria, Tunisia, Cameroon, and Vietnam, which we compare to British colonies and dominions....

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012624405