This paper adds to our understanding of the causes of income inequality across nations by examining the influence of different aspects of gender equality or female empowerment. Whereas the economics of income inequality has been an area of active academic inquiry, the role of gender equality has...

The paper investigates the question whether constitutions are a proxy for institutional quality. It provides a discussion of institutions and states that constitutions are an example of a formal institution. As any other formal institution, constitutions are also influenced by countries'...

We study the effect of exposure to colonial public primary education on contemporary education outcomes in Tunisia. We assemble a new data set on the location of schools with the number of pupils by origin, along with population data during the French protectorate (1881-1956). We match those...

We study the effect of exposure to colonial public primary education on contemporary education outcomes in Tunisia. We assemble a new data set on the location of schools with the number of pupils by origin, along with population data during the French protectorate (1881-1956). We match those...

Although we cannot conceive of processes of economic growth that do not involve institutional change, in this essay we outline some reasons why one should be cautious about grounding a theory of growth on institutions. We emphasize how very different institutional structures have often been...

We provide a new theory and evidence on colonial border formation in Africa. Existing accounts highlight that Europeans unilaterally drew arbitrary international borders in ignorance of local conditions. We instead show that African border formation was a dynamic process that lasted for decades,...

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...

The thematic horizon of this article is the colonial expansion of Western powers in China in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. The focus is on the legal strategies deployed by Germany when it occupied the bay of Jiaozhou and obtained a settlement in Tianjin. This episode illuminates...

The magnitude of returns to colonial-era investments in Africa has been addressed in an extensive literature, as have the nature and legacies of extractive colonial institutions. However, the link between these institutions and the profitability of firms remains unclear. We reconstruct the...

The sinister turn in international law can be defined as the paradox created by successful decolonization efforts when 1) the colonization and decolonization are/were characterized by race, such as in the case of former apartheid states, 2) decolonization reverses the political and legal...

Mainstream explanations for the East Asian miracle often neglect the role of inclusive economic institutions. This study examines how an inclusive banking institution established in Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule (1895-1945) boosted the Chinese Nationalist government’s capacity to promote...

New France, like most European colonies in the New World, suffered from a persistent shortage of metal coins. As Quebec’s imports were limited by French mercantilist policies, their standards of living were constrained by their ability to export a few primary products (mostly fur, cod, timber...

This paper examines the long-term impacts of infrastructural investment. It considers the case of British investment in railway infrastructure in colonial India. Railways had an immediate impact on trade and development in the predominantly agricultural India. In this paper, we show that the...

Purpose: This review synthesizes existing studies that have investigated questions related to imperialism and postcolonialism in accounting literature and identifies opportunities for future research. Design/Methodology: This study undertook a structured literature review of imperialism and...

It is widely accepted that in the last two centuries, liberalism has delivered unprecedented levels of economic prosperity and freedoms to large parts of the world. But liberal history has a darker side: its failure to deliver the promise of liberty and equality to all increasingly appears not...

The Spanish encomienda, a colonial forced-labor institution that lasted three centuries, killed many indigenous people and caused others to flee into nomadism. And yet we show that Colombian municipalities with encomiendas in 1560 enjoy better outcomes today across multiple dimensions of...

All colonial powers granted concessions to private companies to extract natural resources during the colonial era. Within Africa, these concessions were characterized by indirect rule and violence. We use the arbitrarily defined borders of rubber concessions granted in the north of the Congo...

In this seminar, I argue that Caribbean societies witness the effects of global warming and extreme weather events in a disproportionate manner, because of inequalities that are baked into their societies due to the histories of enslavement, colonialism and uneven integration into financial and...

Can market incentives overcome the long-term impact of historical institutions? We address this question by focusing on the role of colonial reproductive policies in shaping fertility behavior in Africa. Exploiting the arbitrary division of ancestral ethnic homelands and the resulting...

Sugar production is often associated with higher levels of economic inequality, particularly when taking place under colonial extractive institutions. Colonial Java is an illuminating case where the reverse was true. This paper presents detailed district-level data to suggest that, due to the...

In this thesis, we will explore what led to the economic development and growth or lack of, in four African Countries with an imperial history. The countries chosen, have two different modern trajectories, the first of the countries; The Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya have a history of...

This paper studies the relationship between land revenue systems and the levels of agricultural income inequality in colonial India. The first district-level comparative estimates of agricultural income inequality are introduced using wage/income ratios for 1916. The presence of permanently...

Capacity is the ability of the state to enforce the rule of law and intervene in the economy. It depends on the efficiency of the bureaucracy and military apparatus.I perform a regression-discontinuity analysis exploiting the variation in colonial regime types along the two banks of the main...

This paper estimates the causal impact of land revenue institutions on long run rural development using a Geographical Regression Discontinuity framework on a new village level data set from colonial India. An early 19th century historical quirk meant that villages in close geographical...