Precolonial political centralization and contemporary development in Uganda
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Volume
64
Pagination
471 - 508
Journal
Economic Development and Cultural Change
Issue
ISSN
0013-0079
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Show full item recordAbstract
The importance of pre-colonial history on contemporary African development has become an important field of study within development economics in recent years. In particular Gennaioli and Rainer suggest that pre-colonial political centralization has had an impact on contemporary levels of development within Africa at the country level. The researchers test the Gennaioli and Rainer hypothesis at the sub-national level with evidence from Uganda. Using a variety of datasets they obtain results which are striking in two ways. First, they confirm 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. They also use an instrumental variable approach to confirm this finding using the distance from ancient capital of Mubende as an instrument. However, their second finding is that public goods like immunization coverage and primary school enrolment are not correlated with pre-colonial centralization. These findings 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.