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Federico Tadei

Assistant professor, University of Barcelona

[email protected]

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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

Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire
Federico Tadei University of Barcelona

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).

Articles

2023

Working Papers

2021

2019

2017

Blog Posts

Income inequality and export-oriented commercialization in colonial Africa: Evidence from six countries
Ellen Hillbom Lund University
Jutta Bolt Lund University
Michiel de Haas Wageningen University
Federico Tadei University of Barcelona
Today, Africa is characterized by substantial variations in income inequality levels between and within countries. While certain countries in West and North Africa portray a relatively equal distribution of incomes, others, notably in Central, Eastern, and especially Southern Africa, grapple with entrenched inequalities. Scholars have long identified two key historical explanations for the outcomes of […]