Econometrica· 2013Q1
Pre-Colonial Ethnic Institutions and Contemporary African Development
- 940citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2013year
Short summary
Pre-colonial ethnic political centralization is strongly associated with higher contemporary regional development within African countries, as measured by night light density.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Pre-colonial ethnic political centralization is positively associated with contemporary regional development in Africa.
- Night light density is used as a proxy for regional economic performance.
- The association is not explained by local geography or other ethnic-specific cultural/economic variables.
- The pattern holds within adjacent ethnic homelands with different pre-colonial institutional histories.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
We investigate the role of deeply-rooted pre-colonial ethnic institutions in shaping comparative regional development within African countries. We combine information on the spatial distribution of ethnicities before colonization with regional variation in contemporary economic performance, as proxied by satellite images of light density at night. We document a strong association between pre-colonial ethnic political centralization and regional development. This pattern is not driven by differences in local geographic features or by other observable ethnic-specific cultural and economic variables. The strong positive association between pre-colonial political complexity and contemporary development obtains also within pairs of adjacent ethnic homelands with different legacies of pre-colonial political institutions.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Econometrica, 2013 · DOI ↗
Continue with a free account
Ask the paper: 3 free questions a day about this paper; save it, get its citation, new summaries every day for your field. Takeaways are Premium.
Continue free on the webSign in with Google or Apple; no card needed. You come back to this paper.
On your phone:
Field: Demography
DemographySocial Sciences