Oil prices experienced in early life predict differential adult outcomes across Nigerian ethnic groups. Our difference-in-difference approach compares members of southern ethnicities to other Nigerians from the same birth cohort. Greater prices in a southern individual’s birth year predict...

Suppression of the slave trade after 1807 increased the incidence of conflict between Africans.  We use geo-coded data on African conflicts to uncover a discontiuous increase in conflict after 1807 in areas affected by the slave trade.  In West Africa, the slave trade declined.  This...

We show that the long-run consequences of historical warfare are different for Sub-Saharan Africa than for the rest of the Old World.  We identify the locations of over 1,750 conflicts in Africa, Asia, and Europe from 1400 to 1799.  We find that historical warfare predicts greater state...

We study the origins of adult mental health using early life income fluctuations.  Combining a time series of real producer prices of cocoa with a nationally representative household survey in Ghana, we show that a one standard deviation rise in the cocoa price in early life decreases the...

We show that rainfall, temperature, and commodity price shocks predict unrest in colonial French West Africa between 1906 and 1956.  We use a simple model of taxation and anti-tax resistance to explain these results.  In the colonial period, the response of unrest to economic shocks was...

Oil prices experienced in early life predict differential adult outcomes across Nigerian ethnic groups.  Our difference-in-difference approach compares members of southern ethnicities to other Nigerians from the same birth cohort.  Greater prices in a southern individual's birth year predict...

African societies exported more slaves in colder years. Lower temperatures reduced mortality and raised agricultural yields, lowering slave supply costs. Our results help explain African participation in the slave trade, which predicts adverse outcomes today. We use an annual panel of African...