Showing results 1 - 6 of 6
| Robert H. Bates
Political institutions and economic growth in Africa’s ‘Renaissance’. Robert H. Bates, October 11, 2017, Paper, "In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, many African states replaced authoritarian political regimes with competitive electoral systems; the economies of many also began to grow, some for the first time in decades. We argue that democratic reform led to economic growth, as did Acemoglu, Naidu, Restrepo and Robinson in…
| Robert H. Bates
The Political Origins of Africa’s Economic Revival. Robert Bates, 2015, Book Chapter. "Writing in the 1990s, William Easterly and Ross Levine (1997) famously labeled Africa a “growth tragedy.” Less than 20 years later, Alwyn Young (2012) noted Africa’s “growth miracle,” and Steven Radelet (2010) less effusively pointed to an Africa that was “emerging” and noted the continent’s rising rate of economic growth, improving levels of education and…
| James Robinson | Robert H. Bates
Africa's Development in Historical Perspective. Robert H. Bates, Nathan Nunn, James Robinson, August 2014, Book. "This edited volume addresses the root causes of Africa's persistent poverty through an investigation of its longue durée history. It interrogates the African past through disease and demography, institutions and governance, African economies and the impact of the export slave trade, colonialism, Africa in the world economy, and…
| Robert H. Bates
The New Institutionalism. The Work of Douglas North. Robert H. Bates, April 2014, Book Chapter. "Whether in the guise of formal theory (e.g. Persson and Tabellini 2000) or empirical research (e.g. Acemoglu, Robsinson et al. 2001), in the study of political economy, “institutions rule” (Rodrik, Subramanian et al. 2002). If anyone can lay claim to the being the founder of he new institutionalism, it would be Douglass North. In this paper, I…
| Robert H. Bates
The New Institutionalism and Africa. Robert H. Bates, July 30, 2013, Paper. "After briefly reviewing the new institutionalism, this article uses the history of political reform in Africa to test its key tenet: that power, if properly organized, is a productive resource. It does so by exploring the relationship between changes in political institutions and changes in economic performance, both at the macro- and the micro- level. The evidence…
| Robert H. Bates
Revisiting African Agriculture: Institutional Change and Productivity Growth. Robert H. Bates, April 2013, Paper. "Africa is largely agrarian, and the performance of agriculture shapes the performance of its economies. It has long been argued that economic development in Africa is strongly conditioned by politics. Recent changes in Africa’s political systems enables us to test this argument and, by extension, broader claims about the impact of…