Welcome to my website!
My name is Idris, and I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of South Carolina. I am on the 2024/2025 academic job market. My primary research fields are development economics, economic history, and political economy, with a particular focus on historical persistence, the deep roots of comparative development, and the relationship between political regime type and development.
In my job market paper, I investigate the long-run effects of Africa’s wave of democratization on economic performance and long-run development. This work is the first to offer a comprehensive investigation of the economic and development impacts of Africa’s wave of democratization. It is also the first in the related literature to exploit a natural experiment to isolate the causal effect of democratization on development.
My research has been published in leading field journals, including The Journal of Development Studies and Oxford Development Studies. My work has also been featured in major media outlets, such as The Conversation, where I communicate research findings to a broader audience.
Please feel free to explore my Research page to access my published articles, working papers, and works in progress. I welcome feedback and collaborations.
Email: iddrisu.kambala[at]grad.moore.sc.edu
Abstract of Job Market Paper
I investigate the long-run effects of Africa’s 1990s democratization wave on economic performance and development. First, using a dynamic panel fixed effects model, I document a robust positive impact of democratization on income per capita. I find that being in a democratic regime – as opposed to a nondemocratic one – is associated with a 1.2 % higher income per capita, while a 10 % improvement on the liberal democracy index raises income per capita by 1.3 %. To isolate the causal impact of democratization on long-run development, I exploit African borders that partition historically and culturally homogeneous ethnic groups into present-day consolidated democracies and nondemocracies. In this exercise, I first present grid cell-level panel fixed effects estimates showing a robust positive impact of democratization on subnational development, measured by nighttime light density. I then employ a within-ethnicity geographic regression discontinuity design to compute the development disparities across democratic and nondemocratic partitions over time. I find that democratic and nondemocratic partitions were initially at similar levels of development, but democratic partitions experienced sustained development gains over time, leading to persistent divergence. By 2013, grid cells in democratic partitions were about 7 percentage points more likely to have light at night relative to their nondemocratic counterparts. Using individual-level survey data, I further show that democratization improves human development, particularly years of schooling, formal education access, and higher education completion, as well as other socioeconomic outcomes including economic security, employment, and access to public goods.