Does Land Abundance Explain African Institutions?

Fenske, James

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1504879

Cited by 41 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 55 publications

(45 reference statements)

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“…The outcome data from the Atlas are spatially combined with Murdock's Tribal Map of African Ethnicities (Murdock 1959b), which includes the location of 843 ethnic group areas. Ethnic groups from the Ethnographic Atlas are joined to the Map using the procedure described by Fenske (2013). 20 There is no map of boundaries for ethnic groups outside of Africa, a point returned to below.…”

Section: B Estimating Equationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of the TseTse Fly on African Development

Alsan

2015

American Economic Review

286

270

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Section: B Estimating Equationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of the TseTse Fly on African Development

Alsan

2015

American Economic Review

286

270

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“…The conditioning set, X i,c ′ , follows Michalopoulos andPapaioannou (2013, 2014) and other related works (e.g., Fenske 2013Fenske , 2014 and includes log land area, log population according to the first post-independence census, indicators for the presence of rivers and lakes, and several geographic, ecological, and natural resource measures. a c denotes country-specific constants that account for countrywide factors that may affect conflict, related to the type of colonial rule, colonial and contemporary institutions, national policies, etc.…”

Section: B Econometric Specification and Estimationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Long-Run Effects of the Scramble for Africa

Michalopoulos

Papaioannou

2016

American Economic Review

313

181

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The predominant explanations on the deep roots of contemporary African development are centered around the influence of Europeans during the colonial period (Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2001Robinson , 2002Robinson , 2005, but also in the centuries before colonization when close to 20 million slaves were exported from Africa (Nunn 2008). Yet in the period between the ending of the slave trades and the beginning of the colonial rule, another major event took place that, according to the African historiography, had malicious long-lasting consequences. During the "Scramble for Africa," that starts with the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 and is completed by the turn of the twentieth century, Europeans partitioned Africa into spheres of influence, protectorates, and colonies. The borders were designed in European capitals at a time when Europeans had barely settled in Africa and had limited knowledge of local conditions. Despite their arbitrariness, boundaries outlived the colonial era.

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“…Murdock's global ethnographic data has become increasingly popular amongst economists and economic historians (e.g. , Fenske 2013;Michalopoulos & Papaioannou 2013, 2014Osafo-Kwaako & Robinson 2013). It is especially, though not exclusively, used in African economic history as a source for pre-colonial data.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing Todd and Matching Murdock: Global Data on Historical Family Characteristics

Rijpma¹,

Carmichael

2016

Economic History of Developing Regions

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This paper investigates the possibilities for the creation of a global dataset on family and household characteristics. This is done by scrutinizing and comparing two prominent data sources on family system classifications. We first focus on historical data, by comparing Emmanuel Todd's classification of countries by family systems with ethnographic data compiled in George Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas. Qualitative and quantitative tests show that the two datasets frequently agree about family traits. Nonetheless, substantial differences exist that are mostly attributable to the focus of the datasets on different regions, and the difficulties in translating local, descriptive studies to hard data. We therefore emphasize that it is important to know the strengths and weaknesses of the two datasets and emphasize that robustness checks are necessary in empirical research into family characteristics. We also compare these historical data with present-day data. This comparison suggests that family characteristics and the values associated with them can persist over long periods. Auke Rijpma, Utrecht University, Drift 6, 3512BK Utrecht, The Netherlands. Email: a.rijpma@uu.nl Sarah G. Carmichael, Utrecht University, Drift 6, 3512BK Utrecht, The Netherlands. Email: s.g. carmichael@uu.nl We would like to thank Tine De Moor, Jan Kok and Jan Luiten van Zanden for their comments on previous versions of this paper. Additionally we are grateful to Jaco Zuijderduijn, Bastian Mönke-diek, Pim de Zwart, Paul Rotering, Benjamin Guilbert, Christiaan van Bochove, Oscar Gelderblom, Maarten Prak, Selin Dilli, Lotte van der Vleuten, and Kati Buzási for their comments during workshops in April and June 2012. We also thank participants at the WEHC 2012 session 'Marriage patterns, agency in households, and economic growth' and three anonymous referees. Last but not least we thank Jutta Bolt for the underlying data, her patience, and always responding to our numerous email questions.10

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Does Land Abundance Explain African Institutions?

Cited by 41 publications

References 55 publications

The Effect of the TseTse Fly on African Development

The Effect of the TseTse Fly on African Development

The Long-Run Effects of the Scramble for Africa

Testing Todd and Matching Murdock: Global Data on Historical Family Characteristics

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