During the colonial period, European powers established various coercive economic institutions in their African territories. These included monopolies and monopsonies on trade, price controls, taxation, and forced labour. It is widely recognized that such institutions were primarily extractive and likely hindered long-term development. Despite this consensus, there is little systematic, quantitative evidence on the exact ..read more

Previous research on the changing property rights associated with colonialism has focused on three groups of agents: colonial governments, indigenous populations, and settlers. The role of corporations in redefining property rights during colonization is, in contrast, under-researched. Our article contributes to this field by comparing two colonies on the periphery of the British Empire: Northern Rhodesia ..read more

Over the past two decades, African Economic History research has surged. Many studies focus on the colonial period when bureaucratic apparatuses became developed enough to produce government documents. The precolonial period, in contrast, has remained underrepresented due to the dearth of sources that scholars could engage with. In a recent article, we explore a source ..read more

Zimbabwe’s industrial development has been well-studied with scholars showing opportunistic and exogenous factors such as the Great Depression, the outbreak of the Second World War, the establishment of the Central African Federation (1953-1963), and the proclamation of the UDI in 1965 as central drivers. While all these factors were important, a new book, Manufacturing in ..read more

Today, Africa is characterized by substantial variation in within-country income inequality covering a spectrum from relatively equal economies in West and North Africa to highly unequal countries in Central, Eastern, and especially Southern Africa. There is growing scholarly interest in measuring current and historical inequality levels in Africa (World Inequality Lab, 2023) and understanding its underlying dimensions and determinants (Bigsten, 2018; Frankema et al., 2023). However, the lack of consistent data limits our understanding of the legacy of past inequality trajectories on present-d ..read more

Why slavery was practised in certain US regions and not in others and why specific groups of Africans were transported in such great numbers to the New World is both a historically fundamental and economically relevant question. It has been shown that African slavery sowed seeds of deep political and economic inequalities that persist to this day (Engerman and Sokoloff, 1997). Slavery also hindered the long-term growth prospects of African populations subjected to slave raids and enslavement, fostering fractionalization and distrust (Nunn, 2007; Nunn and Wantchekon, 2011). Several historians ..read more

Colonial history has left its mark on the education systems of many developing countries. In Africa, the British colonial legacy on education has been more benign than the legacy of other colonisers, especially the French. The British devolved educational investments to Christian missions, while the French limited missionary efforts without investing in mass public education. The resulting divergence between former British and former French colonies in quantitative education measures, like enrolment rates, is well known (Cogneau and Moradi 2014, Dupraz 2019). However, colonial effects on educa ..read more

Inequality regimes in the African context In recent years, the study of economic inequality has taken on a more global and historical perspective. Scholars such as Thomas Piketty, Branko Milanovic, and Walter Scheidel have challenged traditional ideas about the drivers of long-term trends in income and wealth distribution. This new global inequality literature has so far had little to say about Africa. Perhaps this is because available inequality estimates for Africa are patchy and the problem of persistent poverty was long deemed of greater importance than that of unequal distribution (Fosu 2 ..read more

A common explanation for the transition to modern economic growth is the fertility transition, which lead to greater investment in children, lower population pressures, and increased female labour force participation. Therefore, capturing the demographic dividend by decreasing fertility via family planning in developing regions such as the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia has often been a key goal in recent development programs. However, the fertility transition is not the only historical change in fertility patterns. The Middle Eastern marriage pattern  Preceding the trans ..read more

Addressing endogeneity in favoritism studies A large literature on favoritism in Africa argues that leaders favor their own ethnicity or administrative birthplace.  This narrative of nepotistic bias posits that leaders often channel resources toward these regions, driving significant infrastructure development. Yet, recent studies challenge this narrative, offering nuanced alternatives that cast a more complex light on the issue. Our recent study published in the Review of Development Economics is one such outlier. We confront the implicit assumption within favoritism studies that leaders ..read more