Mass media effects on the production of information: Evidence from Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Reports

The media report news that in turn influences behaviors. This news is drawn from a set of available information. In this paper, we study how the set of information is "exante" affected by anticipated media coverages. First, we take an exogenous but anticipated shock of media coverage: Olympic Games and FIFA World Cups. Then, we estimate the effect of this media coverage shock on the production of reports by a publicity-seeking actor: NGOs. We use a unique database that collects NGO reports on a sample of 572 firms in 140 countries between 2002 and 2010. Those reports deal with firm practices, and tone of the speech of these reports is classified as "good" or "bad" for the reputation of the firm. We find that these media coverage shocks significantly impact the production of information. More precisely, stories that are substitute to sport news (reports on host and participant countries) are significantly less reported by NGOs, while the number of reports on complement to sport news (practices of sponsors) significantly increases. Further, in both cases bad reports overreact compared to good ones

The Wild West is Wild: The Homicide Resource Curse

We uncover interpersonal violence as a dimension and a mechanism of the resource curse. We rely on a historical natural experiment in the United States, in which mineral discoveries occurred at various stages of governmental territorial expansion. "Early" mineral discoveries, before full-fledged rule of law is in place in a county, are associated with higher levels of interpersonal violence, both historically and today. The persistence of this homicide resource curse is partly explained by the low quality of (subsequent) judicial institutions. The specificity of our results to violent crime also suggests that a private order of property rights did emerge on the frontier, but that it was enforced through high levels of interpersonal violence. The results are robust to state-specific effects, to comparing only neighboring counties, and to comparing only discoveries within short time intervals of one another

Sécheresse et Guerre Civile en Afrique Sub-Saharienne

D'après le Groupe d'experts Intergouvernemental sur l'Evolution du Climat (GIEC), les changements climatiques vont engendrer un accroissement du nombre d'évènements climatiques atypiques à travers le monde, tels les sécheresses et les inondations. Ces anomalies climatiques pourraient avoir des conséquences désastreuses pour les pays ayant des problèmes d'accès à l'eau potable ou dont l'économie dépend de l'agriculture locale. Des études récentes affirment même que la sécheresse est une des causes des guerres civiles. Le cas le plus emblématique est le Darfour. Il fait consensus sur le fait que la sécheresse a été l'un des facteurs de la guerre civile, même si le conflit avait aussi une composante ethnique. Dans notre étude, on montre que le lien entre précipitations, températures et guerre civile obtenu dans la littérature peut être dû à des chocs planétaires non liés à des variations climatiques. Le problème provient du fait qu'il n'est pas possible de distinguer les effets des variations climatiques annuelles des autres phénomènes planétaires tels que des changements politiques de grande échelle comme la fin de la guerre froide ou des variations macroéconomiques globales comme la crise financière. Lorsqu'on tient compte de ce type de facteurs, les variations de précipitation et de température ont un effet beaucoup plus faible et non significatif sur le risque de guerre civile. L'utilisation de l'indice de Palmer, une mesure locale de la sécheresse qui décrit l'impact du manque d'eau sur les conflits sociaux d'une façon plus satisfaisante que les mesures de précipitation et de température, permet de montrer que l'effet de la sécheresse sur le risque de guerre civile est faible mais positif

State legitimacy and famines in Sub-Saharan Africa

Political Economy of famines mainly focuses on political regimes to understand the role of institutions. In this paper, we investigate a broader concept, state legitimacy, and its role on one specific development outcome, famine management. State legitimacy refers to the political history of a country, meaning the embedding of state and society. Using a database of Sub-Saharan countries observed from 1980 to 2005, we use three empirical strategies: logit on famine occurrence, negative binomial regression and Arellano-Bond dynamic model on the number of years of famines. They all lead to the same results: there is room for a political economy of famine based on an analysis of state. State legitimacy prevents famines, controlling for shocks countries might go through, and controlling for the quality of government. The main contributions of this paper are first to consider the role of state legitimacy in the political economy of famines and second to apply the concept in an empirical analysis, using for the first time a state legitimacy variable

L'effet conditionnel des ressources naturelles sur les institutions

On démontre empiriquement que les ressources naturelles ne sont pas un facteur de dé térioration systématique de la qualité institutionnelle d'un pays. Les régimes parlementaires ne connaissent aucun effet de la rente, tirée des ressources naturelles, sur leurs institutions. En revanche, les systèmes présidentiels sont soumis à un effet non linéaire (courbe en U in versé) des ressources naturelles sur les institutions. Pour de faibles montants de ressources naturelles, les institutions fournissent suffisamment d'incitations pour éviter la mise en place d'institutions de mauvaise qualité tournées vers l'extration de la rente. En revanche, si les institutions ne fournissent pas des incitations suffisantes, on observe alors une détérioration de la qualité institutionnelle. Cet effet n'apparaît que dans les régimes présidentiels. Si l'on ré d uit l'échantillon aux pays démocratiques, les résultats sont identiques

Living in the Garden of Eden: Mineral resources and preferences for redistribution

This paper provides empirical evidence that mineral resources abundance is associated to preferences for redistribution in the United States. We show that individuals living in states with large mineral resources endowment are more opposed to redistribution than others. We take advantage of both the spatial and the temporal distributions of mineral resources discoveries since 1800 to uncover two mechanisms through which mineral resources can foster ones’ opposition to redistribution: either by transmission of values formed in the past, or by the exposure to mineral discoveries during individuals’ life-time. We show that both mechanisms matter to explain respondents’ preferences

A Survey of the Causes of Civil Conflicts: Natural Factors and Economic Conditions

We provide an overview of the roots of civil conflict and distinguish between economic conditions and natural factors. We discuss the very recent (quasi-experimental) evidence on the effect of economic wealth, commodity prices and climate on the likelihood of civil conflict. As a preamble, we present an overview of the theoretical literature on the roots of conflict and distinguish between “capacity-related” and “opportunity-related” causes of conflict. We also provide policy implications regarding the prevention of civil conflicts

Untouchability, homicides and water access

This paper contributes to a burgeoning literature on the role of social norms in preventing some groups from accessing public goods. We examine the case of untouchability rules in India that forbid sharing water with low castes. We show that homicide rates of low castes individuals at the district level are positively and significantly correlated with public access to water, while no such relationship can be found as far as higher caste homicide rates are concerned. This relationship, which is robust to many econometric specifications, is seen as a testimony of the upholding of untouchability practices, despite having been outlawed for more than 60 years by the Constitution of India. This paper provides the first quantitative assessment of the link between access to public goods, untouchability norms and violence at the sub-continent scale. Finally, this study underlines the need for policy makers to partly shift their attention from the quantitative allocation of public goods to the effective access to these goods