Essays in Economic Development and Political Economy

Abstract

This dissertation is comprised of three chapters that study the economic development of modern Africa and the political economy of African American protests in the 60s.

In the first chapter I study how social organization shapes patterns of economic interaction and the effects of national policy, focusing on the distinction between age-based and kin-based groups in sub-Saharan Africa. Motivated by ethnographic accounts suggesting that this distinction affects redistribution, I analyze a cash transfer program in Kenya and find that in age-based societies there are consumption spillovers within the age cohort, but not the extended family, while in kin-based societies I find the opposite. Next, I document that social structure shapes the impact of policy by showing that Uganda’s pension program had positive effects on child nutrition only in kin-based societies.

In the second chapter I estimate the effect of colonial French military deployment on Moroccan soldiers’ long-term outcomes, as well as on their communities of origin, using historical data on Moroccan soldiers, and exploiting the arbitrary assignment of troops to international locations. Within a municipality, cohorts with a higher share of soldiers deployed to France were more likely to relocate there after independence. In contrast, deployment to other locations did not affect emigration. Furthermore, I find that the effects persist for decades after independence. Furthermore, communities with a higher share of soldiers deployed to France have experienced better economic outcomes and a shift from the agricultural to the service sector.

In the third and last chapter I explore whether mass-media affected protests during the American Civil Rights movement and through which mechanisms. I first exploit the exogenous variation in timing of television introduction caused the Federal Communications Commission "freeze" in order to esti- mate the causal effect of TV on protest outbreak. I then complement the analysis with variation in over-the-air signal strength due to topography and climate, as additional source of exogeneity. I find a positive and significant effect of TV on the probability of protest outbreak and on the likelihood that protest is initiated by African Americans. Finally, I extend the analysis disentangling the channels through which television has influenced demonstrations. I find that TV served as a mean to overcome a collective action problem but also that African American role models depicted in TV series are likely to have influenced demonstrators’ ambitions.