IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/lunewp/2021_010.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Did the Cold War Produce Development Clusters in Africa?

Author

Listed:
  • Castaneda Dower, Paul

    (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

  • Gokmen, Gunes

    (Department of Economics, Lund University)

  • Le Breton, Michel

    (Toulouse School of Economics)

  • Weber, Shlomo

    (New Economic School, Moscow)

Abstract

This paper examines the lasting impact of the alignment of African countries during the Cold War on their modern economic development. We find that the division of the continent into two blocs (East/West) led to two clusters of development outcomes that reflect the Cold War’s ideological divide. To determine alignment, we introduce a non-cooperative game of social interactions where each country chooses one of the two existing blocs based on its predetermined bilateral similarities with other members of the bloc. We show the existence of a strong Nash equilibrium in our game and apply the celebrated MaxCut method to identify such a partition. The alignment predicts UN General Assembly voting patterns during the Cold War but not after. Our approach, linking global political interdependence to distinct development paths in Africa, relies on history to extract a micro-founded treatment assignment, while allowing for an endogenous, process-oriented view of historical events.

Suggested Citation

  • Castaneda Dower, Paul & Gokmen, Gunes & Le Breton, Michel & Weber, Shlomo, 2021. "Did the Cold War Produce Development Clusters in Africa?," Working Papers 2021:10, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2021_010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://lucris.lub.lu.se/ws/portalfiles/portal/177103288/WP21_10
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fuda Ma & Jin-Kao Hao, 2017. "A multiple search operator heuristic for the max-k-cut problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 248(1), pages 365-403, January.
    2. Vilmar Jefté Rodrigues de Sousa & Miguel F. Anjos & Sébastien Le Digabel, 2019. "Improving the linear relaxation of maximum k-cut with semidefinite-based constraints," EURO Journal on Computational Optimization, Springer;EURO - The Association of European Operational Research Societies, vol. 7(2), pages 123-151, June.
    3. Laura Palagi & Veronica Piccialli & Franz Rendl & Giovanni Rinaldi & Angelika Wiegele, 2012. "Computational Approaches to Max-Cut," International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, in: Miguel F. Anjos & Jean B. Lasserre (ed.), Handbook on Semidefinite, Conic and Polynomial Optimization, chapter 0, pages 821-847, Springer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christoph Buchheim & Emiliano Traversi, 2018. "Quadratic Combinatorial Optimization Using Separable Underestimators," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 30(3), pages 424-437, August.
    2. Vilmar Jefté Rodrigues de Sousa & Miguel F. Anjos & Sébastien Le Digabel, 2018. "Computational study of valid inequalities for the maximum k-cut problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 265(1), pages 5-27, June.
    3. Christoph Buchheim & Marianna De Santis & Laura Palagi & Mauro Piacentini, 2012. "An Exact Algorithm for Quadratic Integer Minimization using Nonconvex Relaxations," DIS Technical Reports 2012-05, Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza".
    4. Timotej Hrga & Janez Povh, 2021. "MADAM: a parallel exact solver for max-cut based on semidefinite programming and ADMM," Computational Optimization and Applications, Springer, vol. 80(2), pages 347-375, November.
    5. Vilmar Jefté Rodrigues de Sousa & Miguel F. Anjos & Sébastien Le Digabel, 2019. "Improving the linear relaxation of maximum k-cut with semidefinite-based constraints," EURO Journal on Computational Optimization, Springer;EURO - The Association of European Operational Research Societies, vol. 7(2), pages 123-151, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Cold War; Political Alliances; Africa; Blocs; Development Clusters; Strong Nash Equilibrium; Landscape Theory;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C62 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Existence and Stability Conditions of Equilibrium
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • F54 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - Colonialism; Imperialism; Postcolonialism
    • F55 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Institutional Arrangements
    • N47 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Africa; Oceania
    • N47 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Africa; Oceania
    • O19 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - International Linkages to Development; Role of International Organizations
    • O57 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Comparative Studies of Countries
    • Y10 - Miscellaneous Categories - - Data: Tables and Charts - - - Data: Tables and Charts

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2021_010. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Prakriti Thami (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/delunse.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.