Papaioannou, Kostadis J. and de Haas, Michiel (2017) [RETRACTED] Weather shocks and agricultural commercialization in colonial tropical Africa: did cash crops alleviate social distress? World Development, 94. pp. 346-365. ISSN 0305-750X
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Retraction Notice: This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier policy on article withdrawal (https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies-and-standards/article-withdrawal). Following a request from Wageningen University and an intensive investigation, this article is being retracted due to serious breaches of scientific integrity. The investigation by Wageningen University concluded that the dataset used in this study has been manipulated and falsified by the first author (Kostadis J. Papaioannou). This manipulation resulted in the statistically significant results reported in the paper. Such actions constitute a serious breach of scientific integrity and violate the journal’s publishing policies. The editors reached out to the first author, Kostadis J. Papaioannou, with these concerns, but he failed to provide a satisfactory explanation to them. Based on the extensive evidence provided by the university, the editors concur with the decision to retract the article. It should be noted that the second author, Michiel de Haas, was the individual who identified the irregularities in the dataset and reported them to the university, thereby initiating the full investigation. He fully supports the retraction. The first author (Kostadis J. Papaioannou) disagrees with the retraction of the article and disputes the grounds for it. Abstract: A rapidly growing body of research examines the ways in which climatic variability influence economic and societal outcomes. This study investigates how weather shocks triggered social distress in British colonial Africa. Further, it intervenes in a long-standing and unsettled debate concerning the effects of agricultural commercialization on the abilities of rural communities to cope with exogenous shocks. We collect qualitative evidence from annual administrative records to explore the mechanisms linking weather extremes to harvest failures and social distress. We also conduct econometric testing on a novel panel dataset of 143 administrative districts across west, south-central and east Africa in the Interwar Era (1920-1939). Our findings are twofold. First, we find robust evidence that rainfall anomalies (both drought and excessive precipitation) are associated with spikes in imprisonment (our proxy for social distress). We argue that the key causal pathway is the loss of agricultural income, which results in higher imprisonment for theft, unrest, debt and tax default. Second, we find that the impact of weather shocks on distress is partially mitigated by the cultivation of export crops. Our findings suggest that, even in the British colonial context, smallholder export crop cultivation led to higher private incomes as well as greater public investment. Our findings speak to a topic of considerable urgency today as the process of global climate change accelerates, generating more severe and unpredictable climatic extremes. An increased understanding and identification of adaptive and mitigating factors, would assist in targeting policy interventions and designing adaptive institutions to support vulnerable rural societies.
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