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Post Colonial Economic Stability

This project aims to analyse the effect of institutional differences between (post-)colonial African countries on economic performance. In particular, the differences between institutional structures of French and British (ex-)colonies. Within the field of institutional economics, the question which colonial power shaped the most successful ex-colonies is very relevant, since it can determine the institutional structures which promote economic development best.

The main question we try to answer is: Is there a difference in economic performance between African countries that have been colonized by France or Great Britain. Here our hypotheses are:

  • H0: There is no significance difference in economic performance.
  • H1: British (ex-)colonies perform better economically than French (ex-)colonies.

We measure economic performance in terms of frequency of economic crises, excessive inflation and GDP growth. We can also correct for other possible factors that influence economic performance, like if the colony got independence early or later.

The data we will use is of renowned economists Reinhart and Rogoff et al. They have analysed the financial stability of 13 African countries from 1870 to 2014. Their dataset provides information on frequency of specific kinds of crises (currency, sovereign debt etc) and the inflation level in each year. Of these 13 African countries, 5 are former French colonies and 7 former British colonies. To study this, we will add GDP data for the studied countries which can be found at the World Bank.

Planning:

  • Week 1:
    • Exploratory Data Analysis (5 dagen)
    • Data-cleaning and transformation
    • Visualize data
    • Reading background material (1 dag)
    • Formulating research questions precisely (1 dag)
  • Week 2:
    • Finding and reading about suitable techniques (3 dagen)
    • Writing code (4 dagen)
  • Week 3:
    • Finding and reading about suitable techniques (1 dag)
    • Writing code (4 dagen)
    • Testing (1 dag)
    • Producing final results (1 dag)
  • Week 4:
    • Testing (1 dag)
    • Producing final results (1 dag)
    • Creating and preparing the presentation. (1 dag)

By Jelle Mouissie (11348410), Daniel Perez Jensen (11610964) en Joos Akkerman (11304723)