Ruggedness: The Blessing of Bad Geography in Africa

By Nathan Nunn, Diego Puga. Review of Economics and Statistics, 2012

525 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract We show that geography, through its impact on history, can have important effects on economic development today. The analysis focuses on the historic interaction between ruggedness and Africa's slave trades. Although rugged terrain hinders trade and most productive activities, negatively affecting income globally, rugged terrain within Africa afforded protection to those being raided during the slave trades. Since the slave trades retarded subsequent economic development, ruggedness within Africa has also had a historic indirect positive effect on income. Studying all countries worldwide, we estimate the differential effect of ruggedness on income for Africa. We show that the differential effect of ruggedness is statistically significant and economically meaningful, it is found in Africa only, it cannot be explained by other factors like Africa's unique geographic environment, and it is fully accounted for by the history of the slave trades.

Subfields: Demography, Economics and Econometrics, Information Systems

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/92de41d61fbc0add15e6f44fd40ae84643a4e5ac

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Citations in the corpus

The Mission: Human Capital Transmission, Economic Persistence, and Culture in South America* (2018, methodology): “(2013) nd positive human capital externalities from religious schools in Benin, and Okoye and Pongou (2014) on school provision in Nigeria.”
Understanding Cultural Persistence and Change (2017, unknown): “Ruggedness : Terrain ruggedness is measured using the terrain ruggedness index from Nunn and Puga ( 2012 ).”
Is Poverty in the African DNA (Gene) (2017, background): “…(i) the negative effects of institutional confidence and knowledge in knowledge acquisition and innovations (Amavilah, 2009a) and (ii) the evolving stream of studies on the negative long-run impacts of deinstitutionalization on African economic prosperity (Nunn, 2008, 2009; Nunn & Puga, 2012).”