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...