TY  - JOUR
AU  - Nunn,Nathan
TI  - The Long-Term Effects of Africa's Slave Trades
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13367
PY  - 2007
Y2  - September 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13367
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13367.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Nathan Nunn
Department of Economics
Harvard University
1805 Cambridge St
Cambridge, Ma 02138
Tel: 617/496-4958
Fax: 617/495-8570
E-Mail: nnunn@fas.harvard.edu
AB  - 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 To explore this question, I use data from shipping records and historical documents reporting slave ethnicities to construct estimates of the number of slaves exported from each country during Africa's slave trades.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.
ER  -