Federico Tadei
Assistant professor, University of Barcelona
Research interests: Trade and income inequality
My research focuses on understanding how historical events and institutions shaped development paths in African countries, with emphasis on trade and inequality. In particular, I have studied the structure and the short and long-term effects of colonial trade policies and the role that colonial institutions played for income inequality in French Africa.
Country Cases
Most of our current knowledge about long-term patterns of African inequality comes from information on British colonies, while territories subjected to other colonial powers are much less well known. To address this gap, we analyze trends in income inequality for colonies in French West Africa, building social tables for Senegal and Ivory Coast during the last decades of colonial rule. We find that income inequality was high during the colonial period, because of the huge income differential between Africans and European settlers (especially in Senegal) and of high inequality within the African population (especially in the Ivory Coast).