Gunes Gokmen
Biträdande universitetslektor
Did the Cold War Produce Development Clusters in Africa?
Författare
Summary, in English
This paper examines the lasting impact of the alignment of African countries during the Cold War on their modern economic development. We find that the division of the continent into two blocs (East/West) led to two clusters of development outcomes that reflect the Cold War’s ideological divide. To determine alignment, we introduce a non-cooperative game of social interactions where each country chooses one of the two existing blocs based on its predetermined bilateral similarities with other members of the bloc. We show the existence of a strong Nash equilibrium in our game and apply the celebrated MaxCut method to identify such a partition. The alignment predicts UN General Assembly voting patterns during the Cold War but not after. Our approach, linking global political interdependence to distinct development paths in Africa, relies on history to extract a micro-founded treatment assignment, while allowing for an endogenous, process-oriented view of historical events.
Avdelning/ar
- Nationalekonomiska institutionen
Publiceringsår
2021
Språk
Engelska
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Working Papers
Issue
2021:10
Fulltext
Dokumenttyp
Working paper
Ämne
- Economics
Nyckelord
- Cold War
- Political Alliances
- Africa
- Blocs
- Development Clusters
- Strong Nash Equilibrium
- Landscape Theory
- C62
- C72
- F54
- F55
- N47
- O19
- O57
- Y10
Status
Published