中文摘要
一支有影响力的研究强调,殖民遗产在正规金融发展中发挥着关键作用。殖民遗产是否也能塑造非正规金融?我们在一个可信的实证框架内,利用手工地理编码的数据集,考察殖民遗产对非正规金融发展的影响。19世纪,欧洲人武断地划定殖民边界,将非洲许多族群分割到多个国家。我们借助若干跨越国界的空间断点回归设计、英法分割的喀麦隆内部的空间断点回归设计,以及一个独特的自然实验——将同一个前英国殖民地与两个在其他方面相似但受法国殖民影响程度不同的地区进行比较——发现前英国殖民地今天的非正规金融发展优于前法国殖民地。在探究渠道时,我们发现具有英国殖民遗产的地方维持着一种有助于信息流动、支持私人执法和市场互动并促进强健法律文化的社会控制方式。
Abstract
An influential line of research emphasizes that colonial legacy plays a key role in formal financial development. Can colonial legacy also shape informal finance? We investigate the impact of colonial legacy on informal financial development using a manually georeferenced data set within a credible empirical framework. In the 19th century, Europeans arbitrarily designed colonial borders that partitioned many ethnicities across multiple countries in Africa. Leveraging several spatial regression discontinuity designs across national borders and within British-French–partitioned Cameroon and a unique natural experiment where the same former British colony is compared with two otherwise similar areas with different exposures to French colonization, we discover that former British colonies today have better informal financial development than former French colonies. Exploring the channels, we find that places with a British colonial legacy maintain a style of social control that facilitates information flow, supports private enforcement and market interactions, and promotes strong legal cultures.