TY  - JOUR
AU  - Michalopoulos,Stelios
AU  - Papaioannou,Elias
TI  - The Long-Run Effects of the Scramble for Africa
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17620
PY  - 2011
Y2  - November 2011
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17620
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17620.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Stelios Michalopoulos
Brown University
Department of Economics
64 Waterman Street
Providence, RI 02912
Tel: 401/863-2506
Fax: 401/863-1970
E-Mail: smichalo@brown.edu

Elias Papaioannou
London Business School
Regent's Park
Sussex Place
London NW1 4SA
United Kingdom
Tel:  +44 (0) 207000 8432
Fax: +44 (0) 207000 8401
E-Mail: papaioannou.elias@gmail.com
AB  - We examine the long-run consequences of the scramble for Africa among European powers in the late 19th century and uncover the following empirical regularities. First, utilizing information on the spatial distribution of African ethnicities before colonization, we show that borders were artificially drawn. Apart from the land mass and water area of an ethnicity’s historical homeland, no other geographic, economic, and historical trait predicts partitioning by the national borders. Second, we exploit a detailed geo-referenced database on various types of conflict across African regions and show that civil conflict is concentrated in the historical homeland of partitioned ethnicities. We further document that violence against civilians and territorial changes between rebel groups, militias, and government forces are systematically higher in the homelands of split groups. These results are robust to a rich set of local controls, the inclusion of country fixed effects, and alternative data sources. The uncovered evidence thus identifies a sizable causal impact of the scramble for Africa on contemporary political violence and conflict.
ER  -