TY  - JOUR
AU  - Grossman,Herschel I.
AU  - Iyigun,Murat
TI  - Population Increase, Extralegal Appropriation, and the End of           Colonialism
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 4488
PY  - 1993
Y2  - October 1993
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4488
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4488.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Herschel Grossman
Department of Economics
Box B
Brown University
Providence, RI  02912
Tel: 401/863-2606
Fax: 401/863-1970

Murat Iyigun
Department of Economics
University of Colorado
Campus Box 256
Boulder, CO  80309
Tel: 303-492-6653
Fax: 303-492-8622
E-Mail: murat.iyigun@colorado.edu
AB  - Between 1946 and 1976, the European powers granted independence to all of their large colonies in Africa and Southeast Asia.  This paper attempts to provide an economic explanation for this remarkable ending to the era of colonialism.  The main theoretical innovation is to consider the effect of population increase on the allocation of time by the indigenous population between productive and subversive activities.  The analysis suggests that the increase in population during the colonial period increased the potential return to extralegal appropriation of the profits of colonial companies until the colonies became a net burden on the metropolitan governments.  The analysis also suggests that there was less subversive activity in colonies in which the market for indigenous labor was monopsonized because monopsonistic employers internalized the potential negative effect of extralegal appropriation on net profits.
ER  -