This article studies the role of political distortions in driving economic growth and development in Africa. We first discuss how existing theories based on long-run structural factors (e.g., pre-colonial and colonial institutions, or ethnic diversity) may not capture new data patterns in the...

Understanding the primary causes of human prosperity is one of the most important endeavors of social scientists. Much research in the 20th century followed a neo-classical approach which emphasized important factors such as physical capital, human capital, and technological change, but was...