State Antiquity and Early Agricultural Transition as Deep Roots of Economic Development in Africa

Abstract

The study seeks to provide insights into the deeper causes of differences in income levels amongst African countries by examining whether state history and agricultural transition, as proposed deep roots of economic development, can explain modern income levels in Africa. We estimated cross-sectional growth regressions between modern per capita GDP levels,
deep root factors and other controls for a sample of 49 countries. We further estimate two-staged least squares (2SLS) regressions to examine whether early technology serves as a possible transmission channel from early states and agricultural history to modern growth. Our results show a U-shaped relationship between agriculture history and income levels in which countries that transitioned more than 4,000 years ago were able to take advantage of early technology to gain a development head start. Countries which transitioned at later dates could not take advantage of early technology and experienced a ‘reversal-of-fortunes’ effect.