Do African Countries Pay More for Imports? Yes
分析了1962-1987年数据，发现20个非洲前法国殖民地从法国进口钢铁时平均多付20-30%，前比利时、英国、葡萄牙殖民地也有类似溢价，到1987年损失约20亿美元。
The debt crisis and declining living standards require careful husbanding of critically scarce foreign exchange in most African countries. But economic theory suggests that smaller countries, which import from only a few international suppliers and cannot support competitive markets and infrastructure, would be likely to pay more rather than less for imports. Analysis of import unit values for 1962-87 shows that the twenty African former French colonies paid a price premium of 20-30 percent on average over other importers for iron and steel imports from France. The losses associated with these adverse prices totaled approximately 2 billion dollars by 1987. The study also finds that similar price premia (of 20-30 percent) were paid by former Belgian, British, and Portuguese colonies in Africa for imports of these products from their former rulers. Copyright 1990 by Oxford University Press.