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Trade and Colonial Status

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Author Info

  • José De Sousa
  • Julie Lochard

Abstract

Does colonisation explain differences in trade performance across developing countries? In this paper, we analyse the differential impact of British versus French colonial legacies on the current trade of African ex-colonies. We initially find that former British colonies trade more, on average, than do their French counterparts. This difference might be the result of the relative superiority of British institutions. However, a core concern is the non-random selection of colonies by the British. Historians argue that with Britain, trade preceded colonisation. Using an instrument based on colonisation history to control for this endogeneity, we find no evidence of a systematic difference between the British and French colonial legacies with respect to trade. This finding suggests that the apparent better performance of British ex-colonies might be instead explained by pre-colonial conditions.

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File URL: http://www.rennes.inra.fr/smart/Media/Working-papers/WP10-12
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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by INRA UMR SMART in its series Working Papers SMART - LERECO with number 201012.

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Length: 37 p.
Date of creation: 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:rae:wpaper:201012

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Related research

Keywords: Trade; colonisation; Africa;

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References

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  1. Freund, Caroline & Rocha, Nadia, 2010. "What constrains Africa's exports ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5184, The World Bank.
  2. J. M. C. Santos Silva & Silvana Tenreyro, 2006. "The Log of Gravity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(4), pages 641-658, November.
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Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Pre-colonial institutions rule
    by Kariobangi in Kariobangi on 2012-05-30 11:33:47
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Cited by:
  1. Amavilah, Voxi Heinrich, 2011. "Romer’s Charter Cities v. Colonization, Imperialism, and Colonialism: A General Characterization," MPRA Paper 29974, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  2. Lavallée, Emmanuelle & Lochard, Julie, . "Independence and trade: new evidence from French colonial trade data," Open Access publications from Université Paris-Dauphine urn:hdl:123456789/10246, Université Paris-Dauphine.
  3. Lavallée, Emmanuelle & Lochard, Julie, . "Independence and trade: the specic effects of French colonialism," Open Access publications from Université Paris-Dauphine urn:hdl:123456789/9564, Université Paris-Dauphine.

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