IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/4488.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Population Increase, Extralegal Appropriation, and the End of Colonialism

Author

Listed:
  • Herschel I. Grossman
  • Murat Iyigun

Abstract

Between 1946 and 1976, the European powers granted independence to all of their large colonies in Africa and Southeast Asia. This paper attempts to provide an economic explanation for this remarkable ending to the era of colonialism. The main theoretical innovation is to consider the effect of population increase on the allocation of time by the indigenous population between productive and subversive activities. The analysis suggests that the increase in population during the colonial period increased the potential return to extralegal appropriation of the profits of colonial companies until the colonies became a net burden on the metropolitan governments. The analysis also suggests that there was less subversive activity in colonies in which the market for indigenous labor was monopsonized because monopsonistic employers internalized the potential negative effect of extralegal appropriation on net profits.

Suggested Citation

  • Herschel I. Grossman & Murat Iyigun, 1993. "Population Increase, Extralegal Appropriation, and the End of Colonialism," NBER Working Papers 4488, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4488
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w4488.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Grossman, Herschel I, 1994. "Production, Appropriation, and Land Reform," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 705-712, June.
    2. Grossman, Herschel I., 1995. "Robin hood and the redistribution of property income," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 399-410, September.
    3. Grossman, Herschel I, 1991. "A General Equilibrium Model of Insurrections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(4), pages 912-921, September.
    4. Herschel I. Grossman & Murat Iyigun, 1993. "The Profitabality of Colonialism," NBER Working Papers 4420, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Herschel I. Grossman & Murat F. Iyigun, 1995. "The Profitability Of Colonial Investment," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(3), pages 229-241, November.

    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. Garfinkel, Michelle R. & Skaperdas, Stergios, 2007. "Economics of Conflict: An Overview," Handbook of Defense Economics, in: Keith Hartley & Todd Sandler (ed.), Handbook of Defense Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 22, pages 649-709, Elsevier.
    2. Patricia Justino, 2007. "Carrot or stick? Redistributive transfers versus policing in contexts of civil unrest," Research Working Papers 3, MICROCON - A Micro Level Analysis of Violent Conflict.
    3. Zuleta, Hernando & Villaveces, Marta Juanita & Andonova, Veneta, 2013. "Conflict and negotiation in Colombia: Are pre-donations useful?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 105-117.
    4. Grossman, Herschel I & Kim, Minseong, 1996. "Predation and Accumulation," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 1(3), pages 333-350, September.
    5. Kolmar, Martin, 2005. "The contribution of Herschel I. Grossman to political economy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 802-814, December.
    6. Carmen Camacho & Waleed Hassan, 2023. "People Get Ready: Optimal timing of Revolution," PSE Working Papers halshs-03372991, HAL.
    7. Carmen Camacho & Waleed Hassan, 2023. "People Get Ready: Optimal timing of Revolution," Working Papers halshs-03372991, HAL.
    8. Boaz Moselle & Ben Polak, 1997. "A Model of a Predatory State," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1158, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    9. Robert MacCulloch & Silvia Pezzini, 2010. "The Roles of Freedom, Growth, and Religion in the Taste for Revolution," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(2), pages 329-358, May.
    10. Fatema, Naureen, 2019. "Can land title reduce low-intensity interhousehold conflict incidences and associated damages in eastern DRC?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 1-1.
    11. Johnson Gwatipedza & Thorsten Janus, 2019. "Public investment under autocracy and social unrest," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 112-135, March.
    12. Roland Bénabou, 1996. "Inequality and Growth," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1996, Volume 11, pages 11-92, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Johannes Münster & Klaas Staal, 2011. "War with Outsiders Makes Peace Inside," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 28(2), pages 91-110, April.
    14. Herschel I. Grossman & Minseong Kim, 2003. "Educational Policy: Egalitarian or Elitist?," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(3), pages 225-246, November.
    15. Kai Konrad & Stergios Skaperdas, 2012. "The market for protection and the origin of the state," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 50(2), pages 417-443, June.
    16. Konstantin Chatziathanasiou & Svenja Hippel & Michael Kurschilgen, 2020. "Property, Redistribution, and the Status Quo," Munich Papers in Political Economy 02, Munich School of Politics and Public Policy and the School of Management at the Technical University of Munich.
    17. Campos-Ortiz, Francisco & Putterman, Louis & Ahn, T.K. & Balafoutas, Loukas & Batsaikhan, Mongoljin & Sutter, Matthias, 2012. "Security of Property as a Public Good: Institutions, Socio-Political Environment and Experimental Behavior in Five Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 6982, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Aaron Tornell, 1998. "Reform from Within," NBER Working Papers 6497, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. MacCulloch, Robert, 1999. "What makes a revolution?," ZEI Working Papers B 24-1999, University of Bonn, ZEI - Center for European Integration Studies.
    20. Philipp Harms & Stefan Zink, 2005. "Growing Into and Out of Social Conflict," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 72(286), pages 267-286, May.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F02 - International Economics - - General - - - International Economic Order and Integration
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

    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:nbr:nberwo:4488. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.