Ruggedness: The Blessing of Bad Geography in Africa

Nathan Nunn and Diego Puga

Scholarly Articles from Harvard University Department of Economics

Abstract: We show that geography, through its impact on history, can have important effects on economic development today. The analysis focuses on the historic interaction between ruggedness and Africa’s slave trades. Although rugged terrain hinders trade and most productive activities, negatively affecting income globally, rugged terrain within Africa afforded protection to those being raided during the slave trades. Since the slave trades retarded subsequent economic development, ruggedness within Africa has also had a historic indirect positive effect on income. Studying all countries worldwide, we estimate the differential effect of ruggedness on income for Africa. We show that the differential effect of ruggedness is statistically significant and economically meaningful, it is found in Africa only, it cannot be explained by other factors like Africa’s unique geographic environment, and it is fully accounted for by the history of the slave trades.

Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (612)

Published in Review of Economics and Statistics

Downloads: (external link)
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/29412035/ruggedness.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Ruggedness: The Blessing of Bad Geography in Africa (2012)
Working Paper: Ruggedness: The blessing of bad geography in Africa (2010)
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hrv:faseco:29412035

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Scholarly Articles from Harvard University Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Office for Scholarly Communication ().