Emilio Depetris-Chauvin

State History and Contemporary Conflict: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

I examine empirically the role of historical political centralization on the likelihood of modern civil conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa. I combine a wide variety of historical sources to construct an original measure of long-run exposure to statehood at the sub-national level. I then exploit within-country variation in this new measure along with georeferenced conflict data to document a robust negative statistical relationship between local long-run exposure to state institutions and contemporary conflict. From a variety of identification strategies I provide evidence suggesting that the relationship is causal. I argue that regions with long experience with statehood are better equipped with mechanisms to establish and preserve order. Consistently with this hypothesis, I provide evidence that those regions are less prone to experience conflict when hit by a negative economic shock. I finally exploit contemporary individual-level survey data for 18 Sub-Saharan countries to show that within-country long history of statehood is linked to people’s positive attitudes toward local state institutions and traditional leaders.

The Origins and Long-Run Consequences of the Division of Labor

This research explores the deep historical roots and persistent effects of the division of labor in pre-modern societies. It advances the hypothesis, and establishes empirically that population diversity had a positive causal effect on the division of labor. Based on a novel ethnic level dataset combining geocoded ethnographic, linguistic and genetic data, this research exploits the exogenous variation in population diversity generated by historical migratory patterns to causally establish that higher levels of population diversity were conducive to economic specialization and the emergence of trade-related institutions that, in turn, translated into differences in pre-modern comparative development. Additionally, this research provides suggestive evidence that regions historically inhabited by pre-modern societies with higher levels of economic specialization have higher levels of contemporary occupational heterogeneity, economic complexity and development.