Leo Dolan
leodolan.bsky.social
Leo Dolan
@leodolan.bsky.social
Pinned
Here are the links to my recently published EHR paper and AEHN blog on forced labour in colonial Africa:

Living Standards and Forced Labour: A Comparative Study of Colonial Africa, 1918–74
tinyurl.com/2p8k6fhf
Forced to Change? Factor Endowments, Monopsony....
tinyurl.com/2p9cwsra
Reposted by Leo Dolan
The column in the Liberation Day chart labeled "Tariffs Charged to the US" for South Africa is actually the US bilateral trade deficit divided by SA exports to the US: (14.7 - 5.8) / 14.7 = 60%. Kinda not what a tariff rate is! #econsky #tariffs
April 2, 2025 at 10:17 PM
Reposted by Leo Dolan
My contribution to the AEHN open access textbook on African economic history is out! Africa’s Lost Decades, 1974-1994 www.aehnetwork.org/textbook/afr...
Africa’s Lost Decades, 1974-1994 – African Economic History Network
www.aehnetwork.org
April 2, 2025 at 10:32 AM
Here are the links to my recently published EHR paper and AEHN blog on forced labour in colonial Africa:

Living Standards and Forced Labour: A Comparative Study of Colonial Africa, 1918–74
tinyurl.com/2p8k6fhf
Forced to Change? Factor Endowments, Monopsony....
tinyurl.com/2p9cwsra
March 6, 2025 at 5:22 PM
Reposted by Leo Dolan
People worry a lot about looming mineral shortages but this is a solvable problem as it has been solved in the past.

In this article in Time, I look back at the response to previous fears of shortages:

time.com/7202047/cold...
The Blueprint for Winning the Race for Critical Minerals
The U.S. faced a similar predicament in the 1950s, and undertook an initiative that solved the problem.
time.com
January 9, 2025 at 4:51 PM
With all the recent chatter about the Benguela Railway, including in this Economist article, I thought I’d share an extract about its original construction which reads like something out of a Mad Max movie. Source: Adventures in Africa by J.B. Thornhill (1915)
www.economist.com/middle-east-...
January 2, 2025 at 4:52 PM
Nice! I would have expected much greater trade between Ethiopia and its neighbor, particularly Kenya.
I was feeling unfulfilled by studies of Africa's intraregional trade where the punch line is a coefficient for a dummy variable in a gravity model. So I made this Dorling cartogram of 2022 trade flows. Countries are circles proportional to GDP, with recorded trade flows overlaid.
December 24, 2024 at 12:40 PM
Reposted by Leo Dolan
I have a little paper out in the latest issue of the Industrial History Review (a special issue on new frontiers in African economic history) that looks at spatial variation in living standards and purchasing power in French West Africa around 1950. revistes.ub.edu/index.php/Hi...
Spatial inequality in living standards and the urban premium in late colonial French West Africa | Revista de Historia Industrial — Industrial History Review
revistes.ub.edu
November 15, 2024 at 4:41 PM
Until 1963, Companhia de Diamantes de Angola relied on forced labour in its diamond mines, making it arguably the last major employer in colonial Africa to uphold such practices. My IHR blog examines the economic forces that sustained this system and what finally brought about its end. #Angola
December 4, 2024 at 3:03 PM