A common explanation for current African underdevelopment is the extractive character of institutions established during the colonial period. Yet, since colonial extraction is hard to quantify, the magnitude of this phenomenon is still unclear. In this paper, I address this gap in the literature by focusing on monopsonistic colonial trade in French Africa. By using new archival data on export prices, I provide yearly-estimates of colonial extraction via trade, measured as the gap between actual prices that the colonial trading companies paid to African agricultural producers and prices that should have been paid in a counter-factual competitive market (i.e. world prices minus trade costs). The results show that African prices were about half than what they would have been in competitive markets. This suggests that colonial trade dynamics was characterized by a considerable amount of extraction.

中文翻译：

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衡量采掘机构：法属非洲的殖民贸易和价格差距

当前非洲欠发达的一个常见解释是殖民时期建立的机构的提取性质。然而，由于殖民地提取物难以量化，因此这种现象的严重程度仍不清楚。在本文中，我将重点放在法属非洲的单调殖民主义贸易上，以解决文学中的这一空白。通过使用有关出口价格的新存档数据，我提供了通过贸易进行的殖民地开采的年度估计值，以殖民地贸易公司向非洲农业生产者支付的实际价格与应在反事实竞争中支付的价格之间的差额来衡量。市场（即世界价格减去贸易成本）。结果表明，非洲价格约为竞争市场价格的一半。