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The Long-Term Effects of Africa's Slave Trades

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Nathan Nunn

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Abstract

Can part of Africa's current underdevelopment be explained by its slave trades? To explore this question, I use data from shipping records and historical documents reporting slave ethnicities to construct estimates of the number of slaves exported from each country during Africa's slave trades. I find a robust negative relationship between the number of slaves exported from a country and current economic performance. To better understand if the relationship is causal, I examine the historical evidence on selection into the slave trades, and use instrumental variables. Together the evidence suggests that the slave trades have had an adverse effect on economic development.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 13367.

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Date of creation: Sep 2007
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13367

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F1 - International Economics - - Trade
F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
N0 - Economic History - - General
O1 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1998. "The Quality of Government," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 1847, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
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(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Motamed, Mesbah & Florax, Raymond J.G.M. & Masters, Will, 2009. "Geography and Economic Transition: Global Spatial Analysis at the Grid Cell Level," 2009 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, 2009, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 49589, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. [Downloadable!]
  2. Carmen Bevia & Luis C. Corchon, 2008. "Peace agreements without commitment," Economics Working Papers we081508, Universidad Carlos III, Departamento de Economía. [Downloadable!]
  3. Elise Huillery, 2008. "The Impact of European Settlement within French West Africa. Did pre-colonial prosperous areas fall behind?," Working Papers DT/2008/01, DIAL (Développement, Institutions & Analyses de Long terme). [Downloadable!]
  4. Gareth Austin, 2008. "The 'reversal of fortune' thesis and the compression of history: Perspectives from African and comparative economic history," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(8), pages 996-1027. [Downloadable!]
  5. Sambit Bhattacharyya, 2008. "Root Causes of African Underdevelopment," Departmental Working Papers 2008-16, Australian National University, Economics RSPAS. [Downloadable!]
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  6. Nathan Nunn & Diego Puga, 2007. "Ruggedness: The blessing of bad geography in Africa," Working Papers 2007-09, Instituto Madrileño de Estudios Avanzados (IMDEA) Ciencias Sociales, revised 17 Apr 2009. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  7. Amavilah, Voxi Heinrich, 2008. "Domestic resources, governance, global links, and the economic performance of Sub-Saharan Africa," MPRA Paper 11193, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  8. Lederman, Daniel & Maloney, William F., 2008. "In search of the missing resource curse," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4766, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
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