We examine colonial-era primary education as a determinant of modern-day attainment and gender disparities in education. We construct a novel dataset from the French Protectorate in Morocco, combining archival data on colonial school locations in 1931 and 1954 with the most recent Demographic...

Alfani and Carballo (2023) estimate the levels of income inequality in the Aztec Empire around 1492, that is, before the Spanish conquest. Their main estimate finds that the Gini index was 50.4. They conclude that income inequality in the Aztec Empire was high even before the Spanish conquest,...

The "European" agricultural model introduced during the first British settlement in 1788 proved unsuitable for the very different Australian environment, forcing farmers to adapt creatively. This study examines how climate shaped such adaptive behavior in wheat farming in Australia from the...

We investigate the well-being of urban workers in Angola under colonialism. Using a newly compiled dataset derived from archival and secondary sources, we construct welfare ratios for both skilled and unskilled workers in the cities of Luanda and Benguela spanning the years 1760 to 1975. Angolan...

Can colonialism affect today's urban outcomes? This paper examines the long-run impact of Concessions - foreign-run enclaves established in the late nineteenth century inside Chinese cities by European settlers for residence and investment purposes. They soon became the new economic hubs of...

We examine the long-term impact of forced labour on individual risk behaviour and economic decisions. For that, we focus on a policy of coercive cotton cultivation enforced in colonial Mozambique between 1926 and 1961. We combine archival sources about the boundaries of historical cotton...

Using updated data, we analyze the long-run effects of two British colonial institutions established in India. Iyer (2010) showed that areas under direct colonial rule had fewer schools, health centers, and roads than areas under indirect colonial rule. Two decades later, we find that these...

How much did France pay for its colonial empire? Did colonies benefit from large transfers from French taxpayers and private investors, or were they on the contrary drained of their capital? So far, Jacques Marseille (1984) was the only attempt to investigate these questions, by deducting from...

1. South-South Migration, Inequality and Development: An Introduction -- PART I Conceptualising South-South Migration -- 2. The Enduring Impacts of Slavery: An Historical Perspective on South-South Migration -- 3. Recentering the South in Studies of Migration. 4. Writing the Camp -- 5. Migration...

We model a rent-seeking contest among two 'identity ideologues', differentially located along a uni-dimensional identity continuum, and a 'mercenary', who can choose any location in-between. The contest jointly awards an identity-relevant good ('religion') and an identity-irrelevant good...

This paper investigates the impact of hurricanes on school attendance in Jamaica from 1892 to 1942, a period marked by significant natural disasters, including four category two hurricanes. By integrating monthly school attendance data from the fourteen Jamaican parishes with assessments of...

This paper investigates the impact of hurricanes on school attendance in Jamaica from 1892 to 1942, a period marked by significant natural disasters, including four category two hurricanes. By integrating monthly school attendance data from the fourteen Jamaican parishes with assessments of...

This paper studies the effect of settlement and mortality on the growth of African financial markets using the mediation of institutions over the period 1996-2017. A comparative result is based on two types of data bases. Firstly, the Acemoglu et al.'s (2001) database and the Albouy's (2006)...

For decades now, Western development agencies and donors have been castigated for their colonial biases in providing aid to Africa. It is well established that donors provide considerably more foreign aid to their former colonies relative to other countries in the region. However, what happens...