世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

The Accumulation of Human and Nonhuman Capital, 1948-84

Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson have dramatically challenged the tendency of economists to confine their empirical search for the causes of economic growth to the recent past. They argue that the kind of institutions established by European colonialists, either protecting private property or extracting rents, resulted in the poorer parts of the pre-colonial world becoming some of the richest economies of today; while transforming some of the more prosperous parts of the non-European world of 1500 into the poorest economies today. This view has been further elaborated for Africa by Nunn, with reference to slave trading. Drawing on African and comparative economic historiography, the present paper endorses the importance of examining growth theories against long-term history: revealing relationships that recur because the situations are similar, as well as because of path dependence as such. But it also argues that the causal relationships involved are more differentiated than is recognised in AJR's formulations. By compressing different historical periods and paths, the 'reversal' thesis over-simplifies the causation. Relatively low labour productivity was a premise of the external slave trades; though the latter greatly reinforced the relative poverty of many Sub-Saharan economies. Again, it is important to distinguish settler and non-settler economies within colonial Africa itself. In the latter case it was in the interests of colonial regimes to support, rather than simply extract from, African economic enterprise. Finally, economic rent and economic growth have often been joint products, including in pre-colonial and colonial Africa; the kinds of institutions that favoured economic growth in certain historical contexts were not necessarily optimal for that purpose in others. AJR have done much to bring development economics and economic history together. The next step is a more flexible conceptual framework, and a more complex explanation.

The ‘reversal of fortune’ thesis and the compression of history: Perspectives from African and comparative economic history

British colonial rule has often been praised for its comparatively benign features, such as its support of local educational development. This study argues that the impact of British educational policies and investments on the supply of schooling in British Africa should not be overstated. Until 1940, mission schools, mainly run by African converts, provided the bulk of education at extremely low costs. Given the limited financial capacity of missionary societies, the Africanization of the mission was a prerequisite for rising enrolment rates and this only occurred in areas where the demand for Western education was high. The British happened to control most of these “fertile” areas

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Structural Impediments to African Growth? New Evidence from British African Real Wages, 1880-1965

One commonly observed phenomena about taxation in Africa are regional differences and the fact that southern African countries have higher levels of shares of taxation in GDP. This article argues that the major source of differences in ‘tax effort’ is the colonial histories of various countries. Using standard measures of ‘tax effort in a panel data framework and dividing colonial Africa along forms of incorporation into the colonial system, it shows that African countries and others with similar colonial histories have higher levels of ‘tax effort’. However, the difference disappears when we control for the colonial factor. These results hold under different model specifications.

On Tax Efforts and Colonial Heritage in Africa

In this paper, we create the beginnings of a database on indicators of poverty and deprivation in six African countries over the last 100 years, with the intention of explaining the long-term trend of policy. We argue that an important key to those trends is provided by the decision during the first decades of the twentieth century to allow, or not to allow, the occupation of agricultural land by European settlers. If allowed (as in the white settler—controlled economies of South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya, where Africans were squeezed out of income-earning opportunities by competition and prohibition until the 1960s at least) the legacy, we show, was a lack of bargaining power by Africans in the labour market, a real wage static at the subsistence level until late in the century, a highly unequal income distribution, and a small asset base from which to reduce poverty during the liberalisations of the 1980s and 1990s. If forbidden, as in the peasant-export economies of Ghana and Uganda (and to some extent Ethiopia), the legacy was a floor under the labour market, from the 1920s on, which could serve as a basis for poverty-reducing reforms in later years. Thus the potential for poverty reduction during the current ‘poverty reduction wave’ was indeed determined by the historical inheritance of institutions and policies, in particular settlement policies; but in a quite different way from that adumbrated by the recent analysis of Acemoglu et al. (2001). In their analysis, colonies with a high density of European occupation in colonial times persistently generate higher growth potential in later years; we argue the reverse. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Measuring and explaining poverty in six African countries: A long‐period approach

Globally, there is a commitment to eliminate poverty; and yet the politics that have caused anti-poverty policies to succeed in some countries and to fail in others have been little studied. The Politics of Poverty Reduction focuses on these political processes. Analysis is based partly on global comparisons and partly on case-studies of nine countries that span the developing world. Where governments are politically weak, they need to make alliances with other groups to stay in power, and where these have been with low-income groups, the result may be a lasting and effective pro-poor strategy. Often pro-poor policies have been brought in not with progressive intentions, but out of fear that the state will fall apart unless pro-poor elements are incorporated into government, and the most effective regimes in reducing poverty have seldom been the kindest and most benevolent. Ability to provide the poor with access to key markets, in particular labour and capital, is crucial, and this in turn requires fiscal strength. Two crucial elements in the story are the ability to frame labour-intensive policies (given that labour is often the only thing that poor people are able to sell) and the design of effective tax and expenditure policies. Aid donors can make a key contribution, partly through reinforcing recipients' fiscal capacity, but much more through providing technical support of the right kind. Contributors to this volume - Blessing Chiripanhura, University of Namibia, Windhoek Jean Grugel, University of Sheffield Ben Thirkell-White, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

The Politics of Poverty Reduction

Estimates of the UK's stock of human capital are derived by applying a lifetime labour income methodology to data from the UK Labour Force Survey. The results show that using an annual discount rate of 3.5 per cent and assuming annual labour productivity growth of 2 per cent, the market value of the UK's human capital stock in 2009 was £16,686 billion. This is more than two‐and‐a‐half times the Blue Book estimate of the Net Worth of the UK for the same year and £2,703 billion higher than the estimate for the human capital stock in 2001. In 2009, the average human capital stock per head of working age population was £419,326. This is £46,797 higher than in 2001 but only £717 higher than in 2007. Less time in paid employment over their lifetime and lower average labour market earnings means that the total market value of women's human capital (£6,481 billion) was around 63 per cent of men's (£10,206 billion). In 2009, one‐third of the human capital stock was embodied in the 21.7 per cent of the working age population whose highest educational attainment was a degree or equivalent.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Felmr.2010.155.pdf

Measuring the UK's human capital stock

We seek to understand both the incidence and the impact of the African political business cycle in the light of a literature which has argued that, with major extensions of democracy since the 1990s, the cycle has both become more intense and has made African political systems more fragile. With the help of country case studies, we argue, first, that the African political business cycle is not homogeneous, and occurs relatively infrequently in so-called ‘dominant-party systems’ where a pre-election stimulus confers little political advantage. Secondly, we show that, in those countries where a political cycle does occur, it does not necessarily cause institutional damage. Whether it does or not depends not so much on whether there is an electoral cycle as on whether this cycle calms or exacerbates fears of an unjust allocation of resources. In other words, the composition of the pre-election stimulus, in terms of its allocation between different categories of voter, is as important as its size.

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The African Political Business Cycle: varieties of Experience

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the most commonly used measure of a country's economic activity. GDP, however, has limitations as a measure of society's well-being and of people's material living standards. This article presents alternative measures of economic activity that may be more suitable indicators of society's well-being. The article explains how the different measures are calculated and the additional insights they offer.

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Blessing Chiripanhura

Papers

Measuring and explaining poverty in six African countries: A long‐period approach

The Politics of Poverty Reduction

Measuring the UK's human capital stock

The African Political Business Cycle: varieties of Experience

Measures of economic activity and their implications for societal well-being