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Root Causes of African Underdevelopment
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 00:51 authored by Sambit BhattacharyyaSambit BhattacharyyaWhat are the root causes of Africa's current state of under-development? Is it the long history of slave trade, the legacy of extractive colonial institutions, or the fallout of malaria?We investigate the relative contributions of these factors using Atlantic distance, Indian Ocean distance, Saharan distance, Red Sea distance, log settler mortality and malaria ecology as instruments. The results show that malaria matters the most and all other factors are statistically insignificant. Malaria also negatively affects savings. The results are robust even when the malaria ecology instrument is replaced by frost, humidity and rainfall and when the latter are used as additional control variables. We find that frost alone is enough to knock off the effects of slave trade and institutions on longterm development in Africa.
History
Publication status
- Published
Journal
Journal of African EconomiesISSN
0963-8024Publisher
Oxford University PressExternal DOI
Issue
5Volume
18Page range
745-780Department affiliated with
- Economics Publications
Full text available
- No
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2012-02-06Usage metrics
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