The Long-Term Effects of the Printing Press in sub-Saharan Africa

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Cage, Julia; Rueda, Valeria
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-APPLIED ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7782
• DOI: 10.1257/app.20140379
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 69-99
• 关键词: french-west-africa; economic-development; legal origins; IMPACT; institutions; protestants; education; POLITICS; HISTORY

摘要

This article investigates the long-term consequences of the printing press in the nineteenth century sub-Saharan Africa on social capital nowadays. Protestant missionaries were the first to import the printing press and to allow the indigenous population to use it. We build a new geocoded dataset locating Protestant missions in 1903. This dataset includes, for each mission station, the geographic location and its characteristics, as well as the printing-, educational-, and health-related investments undertaken by the mission. We show that, within regions close to missions, proximity to a printing press is associated with higher newspaper readership, trust, education, and political participation.