Institutions historiques et développement économique en Afrique. Une revue sélective et critique de travaux récents

Denis Cogneau () and Yannick Dupraz

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Abstract: This paper makes a selective review of the recent economic literature studying the effect of historical institutions on economic development in Africa. We first discuss a few conceptual issues implied by the measurement of institutions, then present the data gathered by anthropologist G. P. Murdock and their main critiques. A growing number of works make a new use of these data while trying to show that some "ethnic" precolonial institutions are fundamental determinants of present-day differences in development. We comment upon these works and contrast them with others which rather relativize the institutional differences inherited from the colonial period. We finally argue that comparisons of case studies are more promising than cross-sectional studies based on ill-controlled variations

Keywords: Colonization; Africa; Ethnicity; Development; Ethnicité; Développement; Institutions; Afrique; Colonisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-hpe
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