Economic shocks and unrest in French West Africa

Cornelius Christian and James Fenske

No 2015-01, CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford

Abstract: We show that rainfall, temperature, and commodity price shocks predict unrest in colonial French West Africa between 1906 and 1956. We use a simple model of taxation and anti-tax resistance to explain these results. In the colonial period, the response of unrest to economic shocks was strongest in more remote areas and those lacking a history of pre-colonial states. In modern data spanning 1997 to 2011, the effect of economic shocks on unrest is weaker. Past patterns of heterogeneity are no longer present. The response of unrest to economic shocks, then, differs across institutional contexts within a single location.

Date: 2015
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