Survey data reveals that the pace of increase in height stature experienced by successive cohorts born in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana during the late colonial period (1925–1960) is almost as high as the pace observed in France and Great Britain during the period 1875 to 1975, even when correcting...

At the end of 1980s, Côte d’Ivoire entered a deep macroeconomic crisis that put an end to the often praised "Ivorian miracle". After the death of the founding father Houphouët-Boigny, unrestrained political competition added to bad economic conditions and led to the nightmare of civil war....

When European powers partitioned Africa, individuals of otherwise homogeneous communities were divided and found themselves randomly assigned to one coloniser. This provides for a natural experiment: applying a border discontinuity analysis to Ghana and Togo, we test what impact coloniser’s...

At the end of the 1980s, Côte d’Ivoire entered a deep macroeconomic crisis that put an end to the often-praised ‘Ivorian miracle’. After the death of the founding father Houphouet-Boigny, unrestrained political competition added to bad economic conditions and led to the nightmare of civil...

Did colonization change the distribution of prosperity within French-speaking West Africa? Using a new database on both pre-colonial and colonial contexts, this paper gives evidence that Europeans tended to settle in more prosperous pre-colonial areas and that the European settlement had a...