Data and Code for: Political Distortions, State Capture, and Economic Development in Africa

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Nathan Canen, University of Houston; Leonard Wantchekon, Princeton University, African School of Economics and NBER

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
Fig 1a.xlsx	application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet	324 KB	12/17/2021 06:52:AM
Fig 1b.xlsx	application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet	59.9 KB	12/17/2021 06:20:AM
ReadME.txt	text/plain	2.6 KB	01/06/2022 02:02:AM
Table 1.xlsx	application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet	98.5 KB	12/17/2021 06:53:AM

Project Citation:

Canen, Nathan, and Wantchekon, Leonard. Data and Code for: Political Distortions, State Capture, and Economic Development in Africa. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2022. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2022-02-01. https://doi.org/10.3886/E157681V1

Project Description

Summary: These files contain the data for the journal article "Political Distortions, State Capture, and Economic Development in Africa" by Nathan Canen and Leonard Wantchekon.

The article studies the role of political distortions in driving economic outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa. We discuss how existing theories for development based on historical factors (e.g., pre-colonial and colonial institutions, or ethnic diversity) may not explain some new data from the region. We then consider a new framework based on political distortions, which includes state capture, the role of political connections, among others, in driving the variation in economic outcomes in the region, and use it to consider policies that may improve economic growth.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: political economy; economic development; Africa; state capture

JEL Classification:
      O10 Economic Development: General
      O43 Institutions and Growth
      O55 Economywide Country Studies: Africa
      P16 Capitalist Systems: Political Economy

Geographic Coverage: Africa

Time Period(s): 1960 – 2020

Collection Date(s): 2021 – 2021

Universe: Country level data on economic and institutional outcomes (GDP, Corruption Perception Index, Polity Scores)

Data Type(s): aggregate data; observational data

Methodology

Data Source: For the GDP Data:
Access Modality: Public.
Source Location: World Bank Open Data (2021). Data File Retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org/

For the Corruption Perception Index Data:
Access Modality: Public
Source Location: Transparency International, Corruption Perception Index. (2020). Data File Retrieved from https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2020/index/

For Data on Political Financing in Africa and the World:
Access Modality: Public
Source Location: IDEA, Political Finance Database (2021). Data File Retrieved from https://www.idea.int/data-tools/data/political-finance-database.

For the Polity Dataset:
Access Modality: Public
Source Location: Polity Annual Time Series, Center for Systemic Peace. Available online at: https://www.systemicpeace.org/inscrdata.html.

Unit(s) of Observation: Country level

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Published Versions

V1 [2022-02-01]

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