Ruggedness: The Blessing of Bad Geography in Africa

Nathan Nunn () and Diego Puga ()

No 14918, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: There is controversy about whether geography matters mainly because of its contemporaneous impact on economic outcomes or because of its interaction with historical events. Looking at terrain ruggedness, we are able to estimate the importance of these two channels. Because rugged terrain hinders trade and most productive activities, it has a negative direct effect on income. However, in Africa rugged terrain afforded protection to those being raided during the slave trades. Since the slave trades retarded subsequent economic development, in Africa ruggedness has also had a historical indirect positive effect on income. Studying all countries worldwide, we find that both effects are significant statistically and that for Africa the indirect positive effect dominates the direct negative effect. Looking within Africa, we also provide evidence that the indirect effect operates through the slave trades.

JEL-codes: N40 N50 O11 O13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-dev
Date: 2009-04
Note: POL
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14918.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
Working Paper: Ruggedness: The blessing of bad geography in Africa (2009)
Working Paper: Ruggedness: The Blessing of Bad Geography in Africa (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14918

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14918
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().