Relationship Between Natural Resources and Institutions

This article analyses through a rent seeking model, the relationship between institutions' quality and natural resources. Depending on the institutions quality, each country has a specific structural capacity to stand natural resources dependency. It is shown that for each country, a threshold exists, such that beyond this point, any additional amounts of natural resources begin to have a negative impact on institutions. As the stock of natural resources increases, this improves the expected profitability of rent seeking, which in turn lowers the quality of institutions. The mechanism comes from a new balance of power within the country. However, the institutional degradation's intensity is determined by social interactions and depends on both the resources nature and their appropriability level. The inverse U-shaped curve obtained from empirical studies presented in this article supports the natural resources non-monotonic effect on institutions found in the model.Natural resources, institutions, rent seeking.

Drought and Civil War in Sub-Saharan Africa

We show that civil war is strongly related to drought in sub-Saharan Africa. We consider the eect of variations in the Palmer Drought Severity Index (Palmer 1965) - a cumulative index that combines precipitation, temperature and the local characteristics of the soil - on the risk of civil war. While the recent, contentious debate on the link between climate and civil war has mainly focused on precipitation and temperature, without obtaining converging results, the Palmer index describes social exposure to water stress in a more ecient way. We show that it is a key factor of civil war in sub-Saharan Africa and that this result is robust to various specications and passes a series of sensitivity tests. Also, our results indicate that agriculture, ethnic diversity and institutional quality are important factors to link climate and civil war.

Drought and Civil War in Sub-Saharan Africa

In this paper, we show that drought has a positive effect on the incidence of civil war over the 1945-2005 period in Sub-Saharan Africa. We use the Palmer Drought Severity Index which is a richer measurement of drought than the measures used in the literature (rainfall and temperature) as it measures the accumulation of water in the soil in taking into account the temperature and the geological characteristics of the soil. We show that the risk of civil war increases by more than 42% from a “normal” climate to an “extremely drought” climate. Surprisingly, only 2.5% of this effect is channeled through economic growth.Climate Change, Drought, Civil War

Untouchability And Public Infrastructure

Caste rules prohibit the sharing of water between castes as a contact made by an untouchable with water ritually taints the source. Despite untouchability practices being outlawed by the Constitution of India, they are still vigorous and violently enforced. This is what is investigated in this article. The aim is to evidence a relationship between the number of acts of violence against untouchables and the way water is distributed. Our results show that, the more individual the source, the less scope there is for potential ritual pollution and hence, the lower the number of violent acts against untouchables. This is the first analysis, to the best of our knowledge, that quantifies and evidences the enforcement of untouchability rules with regard to water distribution. This paper underlines that water improvement programs have the nice side effect of alleviating caste based violence on top of improving sanitation.Castes, India, water distribution, infrastructures, violence.

Civil War in a Globalized World: Diplomacy and Trade

We consider the impact of diplomatic intervention in civil wars on international trade. Using a large data set over the period 1948-2005, we obtain two striking results: (i) diplomatic intervention has a positive effect on trade for the country in which the civil war occurs (target country); and (ii) bilateral trade between the target and intervening country does not increase more than trade between the target country and the other countries. We argue that intervention induces an enhancement of trade-promoting capital in the target country and show that diplomatic intervention has a positive effect on institutional quality in the target country.

Living in the garden of Eden: Mineral resources foster individualism

Using mineral resources discoveries in the United States since 1800, we argue that mineral mining fosters individualism. Measuring individualism and the demand for redistribution by questions of the General Social Survey (GSS), we show that: (i) individuals living in states with mineral resources are more individualistic and support less redistribution by the government ; (ii) the higher the number of mines in a states, the lower the support for governmental redistribution and the higher the individualism ; (iii) individuals that experienced mineral discoveries during their early adulthood are more individualistic and support less redistribution ; (iv) this effect vanishes over time. These results are robust to the introduction of various explanatory variables that may explain the formation of individualistic values.natural resources ; individualism ; redistribution

Living in the garden of Eden: Mineral resources foster individualism

Using mineral resources discoveries in the United States since 1800, we argue that mineral mining fosters individualism. Measuring individualism and the demand for redistribution by questions of the General Social Survey (GSS), we show that: (i) individuals living in states with mineral resources are more individualistic and support less redistribution by the government ; (ii) the higher the number of mines in a states, the lower the support for governmental redistribution and the higher the individualism ; (iii) individuals that experienced mineral discoveries during their early adulthood are more individualistic and support less redistribution ; (iv) this effect vanishes over time. These results are robust to the introduction of various explanatory variables that may explain the formation of individualistic values.En utilisant les découvertes de ressources minérales aux Etats-Unis depuis 1800, nous montrons que l'abondance de ressources minérales favorise l'individualisme. Plus précisément, en utilisant des questions du General Social Survey (GSS) pour mesurer l'individualisme et la demande de redistribution, nous montrons que : (i) les individus vivant dans des états dotés de ressources minérales sont plus individualistes et demandent moins de redistribution de la part du gouvernement ; (ii) plus les mines sont nombreuses dans un état, plus cet effet est fort ; (iii) les individus qui ont assisté à la découverte de ressources minérales dans leur jeunesse sont plus individualistes et demandent moins de redistribution ; (iv) cet effet s'estompe lentement au cours du temps. Ces résultats sont robustes à l'introduction de nombreuses variables qui sont susceptibles d'expliquer la formation et valeurs individualistes

Untouchability And Public Infrastructure

URL des Documents de travail : http://centredeconomiesorbonne.univ-paris1.fr/bandeau-haut/documents-de-travail/Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 2010.74 - ISSN : 1955-611XCaste rules prohibit the sharing of water between castes as a contact made by an untouchable with water ritually taints the source. Despite untouchability practices being outlawed by the Constitution of India, they are still vigorous and violently enforced. This is what is investigated in this article. The aim is to evidence a relationship between the number of acts of violence against untouchables and the way water is distributed. Our results show that, the more individual the source, the less scope there is for potential ritual pollution and hence, the lower the number of violent acts against untouchables. This is the first analysis, to the best of our knowledge, that quantifies and evidences the enforcement of untouchability rules with regard to water distribution. This paper underlines that water improvement programs have the nice side effect of alleviating caste based violence on top of improving sanitation.En Inde, les règles de castes interdisent le partage de l'eau entre les différentes castes, car le contact d'un intouchable pollue rituellement la source. Ces pratiques d'intouchabilité sont interdites depuis plus de 50 ans en Inde par la Constitution mais semblent persister. L'objectif de ce papier est donc de mettre en relation le nombre de violences perpétrées contre les intouchables et le mode de distribution de l'eau. Nous démontrons que plus l'approvisionnement en eau est individualisé, plus rares sont les possibilités de pollution rituelle et plus faible est le nombre de violences à l'égard des intouchables. L'inverse est vrai. A notre connaissance, cet article est le premier à démontrer et à quantifier la relation entre le mode de distribution de l'eau et les pratiques d'intouchabilité. Une des implications de l'analyse est que les programmes d'amélioration de l'hygiène publique, peuvent être un instrument pour amoindrir, au moins temporairement, les violences de castes

Shutdown Policies and Worldwide Conflict

We provide real-time evidence on the impact of Covid-19 restrictions policies on conflicts globally. We use daily information on conflict events and government policy responses to limit the spread of coronavirus to study how conflict levels vary following shutdown and lockdown policies. We use the staggered implementation of restriction policies across countries to identify their effect on conflict incidence and intensity. Our results show that imposing a nation-wide shutdown reduces the likelihood of daily conflict by around 9 percentage points. The reduction is driven by a drop in the incidence of battles, protests and violence against civilians. Across actors the decline is significant for conflicts involving political militias, protesters and civilians. We also observe a significant cross-country heterogeneity in the effect of restriction policies on conflict: no conflict reduction is observed in low income countries and in societies more fractionalized along ethnic or religious lines. We discuss the potential channels that can explain this heterogeneity

This Mine is Mine! How Minerals Fuel Conflicts in Africa

International audienceWe combine georeferenced data on mining extraction of 14 minerals with information on conflict events at spatial resolution of 0.5 o x 0.5 o for all of Africa between 1997 and 2010. Exploiting exogenous variations in world prices, we find a positive impact of mining on conflict at the local level. Quantitatively, our estimates suggest that the historical rise in mineral prices (commodity super-cycle) might explain up to one-fourth of the average level of violence across African countries over the period. We then document how a fighting group's control of a mining area contributes to escalation from local to global violence. Finally, we analyze the impact of corporate practices and transparency initiatives in the mining industry