Seminario CEDE - Juan Sebastián Galán

This paper examines the effects of African ancestral ethnic differences on long-run economic development in the Americas through the lens of the Colombian Pacific lowlands. We trace the African ethnic origins of afro-colombians by linking a wealth of ethnographical sources with contemporary micro-level data on lastnames. Exploiting discontinuities along the geographical boundaries of Afro-Colombian Community Councils (ACCs), we find preliminary evidence of a “reversal of fortunes”.