Divide and Rule or the Rule of the Divided? Evidence from Africa

Stelios Michalopoulos and Elias Papaioannou

No 99, Economics Working Papers from Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science

Abstract: We investigate jointly the importance of contemporary country-level institutional structures and local ethnic-specific pre-colonial institutions in shaping comparative regional development in Africa. We utilize information on the spatial distribution of African ethnicities before colonization and regional variation in contemporary economic performance, as proxied by satellite light density at night. We exploit the fact that political boundaries across the African landscape partitioned ethnic groups in different countries subjecting identical cultures to different country-level institutions. Our regression discontinuity estimates reveal that differences in countrywide institutional arrangements across the border do not explain differences in economic performance within ethnic groups. In contrast, we document a strong association between pre-colonial ethnic institutional traits and contemporary regional development. While this correlation does not necessarily identify a causal relationship, this result obtains conditional on country fixed-effects, controlling for other ethnic traits and when we focus on pairs of contiguous ethnic homelands.

Keywords: Africa; Borders; Ethnicities; Development; Institutions; Regression Discontinuity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N17 O10 O40 O43 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2011-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Divide and Rule or the Rule of the Divided? Evidence from Africa (2011)
Working Paper: Divide and Rule or the Rule of the Divided? Evidence from Africa (2010)
Working Paper: Divide and Rule or the Rule of the Divided? Evidence from Africa (2010)
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