The Long-Term Effects of Africa's Slave Trades*
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- 1 February 2008
- journal article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in The Quarterly Journal of Economics
- Vol. 123 (1), 139-176
- https://doi.org/10.1162/qjec.2008.123.1.139
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 To explore this question, I use data from shipping records and historical documents reporting slave ethnicities to construct estimates of the number of slaves exported from each country during Africa's slave trades.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 had an adverse effect on economic development.Keywords
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