Publication: The Long-Term Effects of Africa's Slave Trades
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Date
2008
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press
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Nunn, Nathan. 2008. The long-term effects of Africa's slave trades. Quarterly Journal of Economics 123(1): 139-176.
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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 To explore this question, I use data from shipping records and historical documents reporting slave ethnicities to construct estimates of the number of slaves exported from each country during Africa's slave trades.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 had an adverse effect on economic development.
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