Intelligence and Slave Export Intensity: A Cross-Country Empirical Assessment

Asongu, Simplice and Kodila-Tedika, Oasis (2015): Intelligence and Slave Export Intensity: A Cross-Country Empirical Assessment.

Abstract

The literature has not sufficiently engaged the emergence and expansion of the phenomenon of Slave export. This article contributes to the existing stream by examining the role of human capital or intelligence on slave exports. We postulate and justify a reasonable hypothesis that countries which were endowed with higher human capital levels were more likely to experience lower levels of slave exports probably due to relatively better abilities to organise, corporate, oversee and confront slave vendors. Our findings with alternative specifications involving varying conditioning information sets confirm the investigated hypothesis. The findings are also robust to the control of outliers.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Intelligence; Human Capital; Slavery
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education and Research Institutions > I20 - General; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education and Research Institutions > I29 - Other; N - Economic History > N3 - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy > N30 - General, International, or Comparative

References

Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S. and Robinson. J. (2005). “The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth”. American Economic Review, 95(3), pp. 546-579.

Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S. and Robinson. J. 2001. “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation.” American Economic Review 91(5): 1369–1401.

Angeles, L. (2011), On the Causes of the African Slave Trade and African Underdevelopment, mimeo.

Asongu, S. A. (2012). “Government Quality Determinant of Stock Market Performance in African Countries”, Journal of African Business, 13 (3), pp.183-199.

Asongu, S. A. (2013). How has mobile phone penetration stimulated financial development in Africa? Journal of African Business, 14(1), 7-18.

Asongu, S. A., (2014). “On Taxation, Political Accountability and Foreign Aid: Empirics to a Celebrated Literature”, South African Journal of Economics, 83(2), pp. 180-198.

Bezemer, D., Bolt, J. and Lensink, R. (2014), Slavery, Statehood and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa, World Development 57, pp. 148–163.

Comin, D., Easterly, W. and Gong. E. 2010. “Was the Wealth of Nations Determined in 1000 BC?” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 2 (3): 65-97.

Danielle, V., (2012). “Does the intelligence of populations determine the wealth of nations?”, The Journal of Socio-Economics, 46(2013), pp. 27-37.

Dell, M. (2010). The persistent effects of Peru’s mining Mita. Econometrica,78, 1863–1903.

Easterly, W., Comin, D. and Gong, E. (2010). "Was the Wealth of Nations Determined in 1000 BC?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, vol. 2(3), 65-9.

Hadi, Ali S, (1992). “Identifying multiple outliers in multivariate data”. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 54, pp. 761–771.

Huber, P.J. (1973). Robust Regression: Asymptotics, Conjectures and Monte Carlo, The Annals of Statistics, 1: 799-821.

Kodila-Tedika, O. (2011). Esclavagisme et colonisation : quelles conséquences en Afrique ? Résumé critique des travaux de l’économiste Nathan Nunn. Revue Congolaise d’Economie, 6(1), 41-61.

Kodila-Tedika, O., & Asongu, S. A., (2015c). “Tribalism and Financial Development”, African Governance and Development Institute Working Paper No. 15/018, Yaoundé.

Kodila-Tedika, O., & Asongu, S. A. (2015a). “The effect of intelligence on financial development: a cross-country comparison”. Intelligence, 51(July-August), pp. 1-9.

Kodila-Tedika, O., & Asongu, S. A. (2015b). “Intelligence, Human Capital and HIV/AIDS: Fresh Exploration”, African Governance and Development Institute Working Paper, No. 15/027, Yaoundé. Revised and Resubmitted: Intelligence.

Lynn, R., (2012). “IQs predict differences in the technological development of nations from 1000 BC through 2000 AD”. Intelligence, 40 (5), pp. 439–444.

McEvedy, C. and Jones, R. (1978), Atlas of World Population History,New York: Penguin Books.

Midi, H. and Talib, B.A. (2008). The Performance of Robust Estimator on Linear Regression Model Having both Continuous and Categorical Variables with Heteroscedastic Errors, Malaysian Journal of Mathematical Sciences, 2(1): 25-48.

New, M., Lister, D., Hulme, M. and Makin. I. 2002. .A High-Resolution Data Set of Surface Climate over Global Land Areas. Climate Research, 21(1): 1-25.

Nordhaus, W. D. 2006. Geography and Macroeconomics: New Data and New Findings. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(10): 3510-3517.

Nunn, N. (2008a), “The Long-Term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 123, No. 1, February, pp. 139-176.

Nunn, N. (2008b), “Slavery, Inequality, and Economic Development in the Americas: An Examination of the Engerman-Sokoloff Hypothesis” in Helpman, E. (ed.), Institutions and Economic Performance, pp. 148-180. Harvard University Press.

Nunn, N. (2010b), “Shackled to the Past: The Causes and Consequences of Africa’s SlaveTrades,” DIAMOND, J.and ROBINSON, J. A. (eds.), Natural Experiments of History, pp. 142-184. Harvard University Press.

Nunn, N. and Puga, D. (2012). ‘‘Ruggedness: The Blessing of Bad Geography in Africa,’’ Review of Economics and Statistics, 94(1), 20–36.

Nunn, N. and Wantchekon, L. (2011).‘‘The Slave Trade and Origins of Mistrust in Africa,’’ American Economic Review, 101(7), 3221–3252.

Olsson, O. & Hibbs, D. Jr., (2005). "Biogeography and long-run economic development," European Economic Review, vol. 49(4), 909-938.

Philippe, A. (2010), “L’impact économique de l’esclavage dans les pays de l’ancienne Afrique Occidentale Française”, Mémoire de DEA, Paris School of Economics.

Putterman, L. (2004), State Antiquity Index (Statehist), http://www.econ.brown.edu/fac/Louis_Putterman/antiquity%20index.htm Putterman, L. 2008. "Agriculture, Diffusion and Development: Ripple Effects of the Neolithic Revolution,"Economica, 75(300), 729-748.

Smith, D., (2009). “African chiefs urged to apologise for slave trade”, The Guardian (November , 2009). http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/18/africans-apologise-slave-trade (Accessed: 26/08/2015).

United Nations, (2007), United Nations Common Database, New York: United Nations Statistics Division.

Whatley, W. and Gillezeau, R. (2010), “The Slave Trade and Ethnic Stratification in Africa”, University of Michigan Working paper.

Whatley, W. and Gillezeau, R. (2011a), “The Impact of the Transatlantic Slave Trade on Ethnic Stratification in Africa”, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, pp.1-9.

Whatley, W. and Gillezeau, R. (2011b), “The Fundamental Impact of the Slave Trade on African Economies”, Rhode, P., Rosenbloom, J. and Weiman, D., Economic Evolution and Revolution in Historical Time, Stanford, Stanford University Press.