Local majorities: How administrative divisions shape comparative development

Richard Bluhm, Roland Hodler () and Paul Schaudt

No 2110, Economics Working Paper Series from University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science

Abstract: We study the role of subnational borders and the importance of local majorities for local economic development. We exploit that France imposed a particular administrative structure on its Sub-Saharan African possessions in the early 20th century. The French government had little interest in pre-colonial political units. As a result, their colonial districts cut across ethnic homelands in a way that led to plausibly exogenous variation in an ethnic group's population share across colonial districts. We find that ethnic groups who were a local majority in most colonial districts, in which they were present, are more economically developed today. Furthermore, we show that the parts of ethnic homelands with a higher district-level population share are more economically developed today than other parts of the same homeland. We also provide evidence that the effects are persistent for various reasons, including the stickiness of subnational borders and higher infrastructure investments during colonial times.

Keywords: Ethnic politics; local majorities; administrative-territorial structures; colonization; regional development; persistence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 F54 H54 H75 N97 O10 R12 R50 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 88 pages
Date: 2021-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro, nep-his and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://ux-tauri.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/econwp/EWP-2110.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:usg:econwp:2021:10

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Paper Series from University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().