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Root Causes of African Underdevelopment

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 00:51 authored by Sambit BhattacharyyaSambit Bhattacharyya
What 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 Economies

ISSN

0963-8024

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Issue

5

Volume

18

Page range

745-780

Department affiliated with

  • Economics Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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