出版社：Suntory Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines
摘要：The importance of pre-colonial history on contemporary African development has become an important eld of study within development economics in recent years. In particular Gennaioli and Rainer (2007) suggest that pre-colonial political centralization has had an impact on con- temporary levels of development within Africa at the country level. We test the Gennaioli and Rainer (2007) hypothesis at the sub-national level with evidence from Uganda. Using a variety of datasets we obtain results which are striking in two ways. First, we con rm the Gennaioli and Rainer (2007) hypothesis that pre-colonial centralization is highly correlated with modern- day development outcomes such as GDP, asset ownership and poverty levels, and that these correlations hold at the district, sub-county and individual levels. We also use an instrumental variable approach to con rm this nding using the distance from ancient capital of Mubende as an instrument. However, our second nding is that public goods like immunization coverage and primary school enrolment are not correlated with pre-colonial centralization. These ndings are thus consistent with a correlation between pre-colonial centralization and private rather than public goods, thereby suggesting the persistence of poverty and wealth from the pre-colonial period to the present. *Corresponding author. We would like to thank Je¤rey Conroy-Krutz for sharing data with us and Cecilia Lanata Briones for research assistance. All errors remain our own.
