Can part of Africa’s current underdevelopment be explained by its slave trades? To explore this question, I use data from shipping records and historical documents reporting slave ethnicities to construct estimates of the number of slaves exported from each country during Africa’s slave trades. I find a robust negative relationship between the number of slaves exported from a country and current economic performance. To better understand if the relationship is causal, I examine the historical evidence on selection into the slave trades, and use instrumental variables. Together the evidence suggests that the slave trades have had an adverse effect on economic development.
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Impact of Slavery on Slave Exporting Nations
It's well established that most poor nations are located in Africa. Here's one possible explanation:
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By negative relationship between the number of slaves exported from a country and current economic performance do mean that more the number of people exported better it is developed now ??
ReplyDeleteNo. It's saying the higher the number of slaves taken, the lower the economic performance.
ReplyDeleteIn the same way that immigration is good for an economy, kidnapping people is bad.
Ok..thanks of clarifying.
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