 Trade and Colonial StatusJosé De Sousa () and Julie Lochard No 210388, Working Papers from Institut National de la recherche Agronomique (INRA), Departement Sciences Sociales, Agriculture et Alimentation, Espace et Environnement (SAE2) Abstract: Does colonisation explain differences in trade performance across developing countries? In this paper, we analyse the differential impact of British versus French colonial legacies on the current trade of African ex-colonies. We initially find that former British colonies trade more, on average, than do their French counterparts. This difference might be the result of the relative superiority of British institutions. However, a core concern is the non-random selection of colonies by the British. Historians argue that with Britain, trade preceded colonisation. Using an instrument based on colonisation history to control for this endogeneity, we find no evidence of a systematic difference between the British and French colonial legacies with respect to trade. This finding suggests that the apparent better performance of British ex-colonies might be instead explained by pre-colonial conditions. Keywords: International; Relations/Trade (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:inrasl:210388 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from Institut National de la recherche Agronomique (INRA), Departement Sciences Sociales, Agriculture et Alimentation, Espace et Environnement (SAE2) Contact information at EDIRC. |
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