Many papers in economics have shown the scale of the damage that slavery did to Africa, but can we also make the argument that the slave trade helped cause Europe’s economic development? Ellora Derenoncourt of Princeton is the author of a recently published paper which uses new methods and new data to investigate this question. 

She talks to Tim Phillips about what historical records can and cannot tell us about that link, and what this data tells us about the growth of European port cities.