The Long-Term Effects of Africa's Slave Trades^*

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 To explore this question, I use data from shipping records and historical documents reporting slave ethnicities to construct estimates of the number of slaves exported from each country during Africa's slave trades.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 have had an adverse effect on economic development.

Distributive justice, corruption, and entrepreneurial behavior

“…Worse yet, it is likely to encourage rent-seeking as entrepreneurs begin managing relationships with politicians, civil servants, and political consultants, in the effort to change the rules of competition versus comply with the existing rules within one's industry (Baumol 2002). This can lead to increasing returns in rent-seeking activities (Murphy et al 1993) and the potential for reward structures to become endogenous as new relationships between economic and political systems emerge and become entrenched (Acemoglu and Johnson 2005;Nunn 2007). Indeed, Sobel (2008) and McMullen et al (2008) employ a similar transaction-cost-based logic and empirically demonstrate the negative effects that institutional inefficiency can have on productive entrepreneurial activity.…”

Moralizing gods and armed conflict

“…This instrument is closely related to instruments used in several recent contributions in the literature. In addition to the studies discussed in the introduction, Nunn (2008) and Nunn and Wantchekon (2011) respectively use the distance to the coast and the distance to major slave destinations as instruments for the intensity of raids and captures of people who were sold as slaves. Dittmar (2011) uses distance from Mainz, the birthplace of printing, as an instrument for the adoption of the printing press.…”

“…With the notable exceptions of Nunn (2008) and Nunn and Wantchekon (2011), who devise identification strategies relying on external instruments, many studies regress a contemporary outcome variable Y on a key right-hand side regressor X that is determined in the distant past. This approach has been hugely beneficial in learning about the consequences of historical factors, since the determination of X in the distant past means reverse causality concerns are unlikely.…”

“…Participants who self-identified as believers were significantly more likely to exercise the aggressive option, and especially more likely to do so when primed to believe that the violent passage was from the Bible. Bushman et al (2007) conclude that violence that is sanctioned by moralizing gods 3 Recent research has documented, for example, that modern-day fertility and attitudes to gender roles have been shaped by centuries-old division of labor Nunn, 2011, 2013), that more democratic contemporary institutions are well-explained by the traditional political accountability of local chiefs (Gennaioli and Rainer, 2007), that a history of political centralization is associated with better development outcomes (Michalopoulos and Papaioannou, 2013), that the origins of modern distrust and underdevelopment in Africa can be traced back to the slave trade that began in the 16th century (Nunn, 2008;Nunn and Wantchekon, 2011), that early democratic features predict long-term economic success (Madsen, Raschky and Skali, 2015), that pre-colonial conflicts in Africa have left a legacy of conflict (Besley and Reynal-Querol, 2014) and, more generally, that culture matters for economic growth (Gorodnichenko and Roland, 2011). significantly increases aggression.…”

From diamonds to coal? Critical reflections on Botswana’s economic future

“…First, the impact of colonial history is increasingly understood to account for persistent underdevelopment in African countries (Nunn, 2008). In Botswana, this historical colonial impact was minimised, exemplified by three Batswana chiefs approaching Queen Victoria to prevent the advance through Bechuanaland of Cecil John Rhodes and his British South Africa Company (Robinson and Parsons, 2006).…”