The study of African economic history has reached a tipping point. With few exceptions, quantitative investigations into Africa’s economic past were limited to the study of aggregated macro-economic variables – production, taxation and exports – published in colonial reports and available in the archives of the colonizer. These contributions were – and are – certainly important, but they also present limitations. One of these is that, because the figures are aggregated, often at the country level, they lack regional variation. For a country like the Congo, for instance, with a land area larger than Western Europe, this is problematic. Another limitation is that they provide only one observation annually, which very rarely allow for testing strategies to identify causal effects. This is because usually lots of confounding factors are at work at the national level.

Funding: Travel expenses in South Africa will be covered and accommodation for the duration of the workshop will be provided by the ERSA Economic History Working Group.

Domestic Flights: To Cape Town.

Requirements: Each attendee will be expected to present their current research using longitudinal data. Sessions for full-length papers as well as shorter, work-in-progress papers will be available.

Applications must be submitted to workshops@econrsa.org by May 4 2015.