Colonial administration and post-independence development

Development economists seek to understand why some countries have achieved long-term economic growth and prosperity, while many countries are still at risk of poverty. The fact that many low-and middle-income countries around the world were once European colonies, is an important factor that this research project addresses. Colonial rule brought undisputable and inexcusable misery and oppression. It also imported parts of European administrative structures, such as the parts of European law and jurisprudence, or regulations for certain markets (such as the labor market), which function as the rules of the game in an economy. Economists call these rules institutions. Well-functioning institutions protect property rights, enable investment, and prevent corruption. Institutions are thus important building blocks in economic development. However, well-functioning institutions do not exist everywhere. We know rather little about how they emerge and why institutional reforms often fail. This project examines the role of seasoned civil servants in the creation of modern institutions in the colonies in the years before and after independence. Skilled and experienced civil servants were present only to varying degrees in British colonies at this crucial time of institutional reforms. Many British civil servants left the country before independence. The training of local officials from the colonies had often been neglected. This project explores the personnel files of 20,000 individual British and local civil servants who held middle and senior positions in 45 British colonies in the years before and after independence. We examine who was responsible for designing and executing a particular law or regulation. Did these officials have the technical skills necessary to introduce and enforce a complex regulation? We first determine whether there was a sufficient number of officials in a given department. We then analyze the extent to which the human quality of staffing varied across departments. The civil service fulfilled important development tasks in the newly independent states. We use department/sector-level results (e.g. the vaccination rate as a measure of health department quality, road construction as a measure of infrastructure departments) to establish a statistically verifiable link between these outcomes and the changes in the human quality of state officials observed in these departments.

The project addresses a central question in development economics. We know that effective institutions and strong state capacity are conditions for successful development and long-term economic growth. However, installing effective institutions and governance practices in countries lacking them has been challenging. The project studies this question by examining the bureaucratic capacity in the final years of the British colonies. The connection between administrative capacity and development outcomes has been difficult to establish in part due to the lack of satisfactory data. The project exploits new and detailed biographical data of 14,000 individual British officers who worked in mid- and senior positions in 45 colonies in the final years up to independence. The proposed study (together with Guo Xu from Berkeley, Haas School of Business) examines the impacts of differences in the administrative capacities of British colonies on departmental level. Decolonization provides an interesting period, in which far-reaching institutional reforms took place, while at the same time local human capital gradually replaced outgoing British personnel. The rate at which British personnel retired varied between departments inside the colonial administrations. At independence, outgoing British officers were offered a considerable inducement payment if they remained for five more years. This payment increased with age and peaked at 40 years, which serves as an exogenous variation. We are able to observe how many British officers remained in each department (e.g. health department, education department) after independence. We then analyze the extent to which the quality of departments varied with a high/low share of British officers. Public services fulfilled important development tasks in newly independent states. We use department/sector-level outcomes (e.g. vaccination rate as a measure of the quality of the health department) and link them to the changes in quality observed in the related departments.