HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, & THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

We empirically examine the effect of bad geography (measured as rugged terrain) on well-being outcomes through its historical interaction with the African slave trade. This paper builds on a broad steam of research that examines how geography interacts with historical events in shaping contemporary outcomes. While bad geography (rugged terrain) is in general negatively correlated with economic outcomes, previous literature has empirically argued that paradoxically in Africa, countries with a rugged landscape tend to (paradoxically) perform better than flatter ones, because rugged terrain in the case of Africa shielded those being raided during the slave trades and hence would have a historic indirect positive effect on income. In this paper, we further examine the robustness of this positive ruggedness effect for Africa by introducing time-series data to examine the magnitude of this effect over time via calculating marginal effects (as opposed to static approaches in the previous literature). We also exploit novel non-GDP measures of well-being as dependent variables to further test the robustness of ruggedness’ positive effect for Africa. Finally, we also make improvements on various techniques in the previous literature, such as incorporating multiple imputation methods to deal with missing data (vs. list-wise deletion). After incorporating new data, dynamic measurements, and improved empirical techniques, the positive ruggedness effect for Africa as suggested by the previous literature appears to be less unambiguously robust than implied. We find some evidence to suggest that insofar that this positive ruggedness effect for Africa exists, it is one that diminishes as the historical distance from the precipitating event (slave trade) increases, the direction of this effect does not always hold for other non-GDP measures of well-being, and its effect may often be overpowered by various time-period specific events.