The costs of organized violence: a review of the evidence

I critically review recent studies that estimate those costs of violence and conflict that can emerge among organized political groupings, such as states, religious and ethnic organizations, guerillas and paramilitaries. The review includes studies that estimate direct and indirect costs due to internal conflicts (civil wars and other lower-level conflicts), terrorism, and external conflicts, including military spending. There are a number of key theoretical concerns on what counts as a cost, and, depending on the methods and evidence used, estimated costs vary widely. However, even minimum estimates are economically significant, especially for low-income countries. This is even more so when the costs of different types of organized conflict and violence are aggregated.     

Civil conflict and secessions

This paper studies secessions as the outcome of conflict between regions. We study under what conditions regions will divert costly resources to fight each other over political borders. We derive the probability of secession and the amount of resources diverted to separatist conflict, and show how those variables depend on factors such as heterogeneity costs, economies of scale, relative size, and external threats. We also model civil conflict over types of government, after borders have been determined, and study how this political conflict affects the incentives to secede. This paper has been written in memory of Herschel Grossman, and owes much to his inspiration. I am grateful to Michelle Garfinkel and David Weil, who co-organized a conference in Herschel’s honor at Brown in April 2006, for their encouragement. I thank Michelle Garfinkel and an anonymous referee for useful comments and suggestions. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Bancarization and violent attacks from guerrilla and other illegal groups in Colombia

Income shocks affect violence through the opportunity cost and rapacity effects. Existing studies focus on the impact of transitory shocks, especially commodity price innovations. This paper builds on this literature and studies the causal effect of permanent income shocks on armed conflict in Colombia. Using a rich dataset reporting all guerrilla and other armed groups' attacks by municipality between 2009 and 2014 and information on the provision of banking services, it shows that increasing bancarization leads to reductions in violence. These results have important implications for public policy in countries with a long history of violence. They suggest that promoting financial inclusion is useful for reducing conflict.     

Property Rights Assignment: Conflict and the Implementability of Rules

The paper studies the assignment of property rights. By assignment I mean a social mechanism that transfers a valuable resource from an “unowned” state to an “owned” state (for example, a first-possession rule). I argue that any assignment mechanism faces an implementation constraint with one exception, namely the assignment by conflict. I characterize this constraint and show that under some conditions population growth facilitates rule-based assignments because appropriation by conflict becomes more costly. In other cases, however, this effect is reversed. The model may give some insights regarding the emergence and the disappearance of the open-field system in medieval Europe which, paradoxically, both have been attributed to population growth. This paper is dedicated to Horst Hegmann. For helpful and insightful comments in discussions and on the paper I thank Roderick Hay, Horst Hegmann, Christopher Kingston, Guy Kirsch, Krishna Ladha, Marc Law, Anton Miglo, Douglass North, and John Nye. I also thank the editor Amihai Glazer and two anonymous referees for their comments. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Finding Tools to Limit Sectarian Violence in Indonesia: The Relevance of Restorative Justice

This article explores the relevance of the restorative justice paradigm to issues of conflict avoidance and resolution in Indonesia. Sectarian violence engulfed Indonesia in the late 1990s after the fall of the New Order, largely as a result of resource competition and other economic factors. In addition, the revival of customary forms of authority through the national indigenous peoples movement exacerbated the potential for conflict between long‐settled indigenes and more recent migrants. A case study shows how the spread of communal conflict to the Lindu plain in Central Sulawesi was averted despite the sectarian violence in a nearby city. Local customary procedures of adjudication were insufficient to cope with such issues in a multiethnic context, as the ethnic groups in the area did not all subscribe to the same body of custom (adat). Instead, a diverse assembly of stakeholders invoked nationalist idioms of harmony and consensus to forge an agreement to avoid violence. Previous legal theorists have pointed to adat as a preexisting respository of restorative justice practices. However, this article argues that interethnic contexts require restorative practice to forge novel syntheses to deal with communal violence. Such syntheses may incorporate adat mechanisms, but they must also integrate other tools that gain the allegiance of multiple groups to work toward reconciliation and avoidance of further violence.     

Social identity,inequality, and conflict: correction and extension

This paper corrects and extends the analysis in Social Identity, Inequality, and Conflict by James Robinson (Economics of Governance, 2(1), 2001). For conflict along class lines, Robinson finds the total impact of mobility on conflict to be ambiguous. Contrary to his result, I show that, under his assumptions, the effect of social mobility on class conflict is unambiguous. Higher mobility always decreases conflict. In my extension to Robinsons model, I explore mobilitys impact on class conflict in a society where the tax rate is not fixed. I demonstrate that if the tax rate is proportional to the population of the group in power relative to the total population of the society, then the effects of social mobility on class conflict are indeed ambiguous.Submitted: February 2002, Accepted: July 2003,I am grateful to an anonymous referee and Amihai Glazer for their comments. I would also like to thank Herschel Grossman for his help along the way.     

The cycle of violence in the Second Intifada: Causality in nonlinear vector autoregressive models

We contest Jaeger and Paserman's claim (Jaeger and Paserman , 2008. The cycle of violence? An empirical analysis of fatalities in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. American Economic Review 98 (4): 1591–1604) that Palestinians did not react to Israeli aggression during Intifada 2. We address the differences between the two sides in terms of the timing and intensity of violence, estimate nonlinear vector autoregression models that are suitable when the linear vector autoregression innovations are not normally distributed, identify causal effects rather than Granger causality using the principle of weak exogeneity, and introduce the “kill‐ratio” as a concept for testing hypotheses about the cycle of violence. The Israelis killed 1.28 Palestinians for every killed Israeli, whereas the Palestinians killed only 0.09 Israelis for every killed Palestinian.     

Industry dynamics with knowledge-based competition: a computational study of entry and exit patterns

I propose a computational model of industry evolution capable of matching many stylized facts. It views the firm as a myopic but adaptive entity whose survival depends on its ability to perform various activities with greater efficiency than its rivals. In this model, the shakeout pattern arises naturally in the early stage of industrial development. I provide a full comparative dynamics analysis of how various industry-specific factors determine the numbers and the rates of entries and exits over time as well as the ages of the exiting firms. An earlier version of this paper was circulated and presented under the title, “Non-Equilibrium Industry Dynamics with Knowledge-Based Competition: An Agent-Based Computational Model.” I would like to thank the two anonymous referees, Jason Barr, Ed Bell, Jon Harford, Joe Harrington, Bill Kosteas, Edward Nell, and the conference participants at the EEA-2007 Meetings (New York, NY) as well as the 2007 International System Dynamics Conference (Boston, MA) for their helpful comments and suggestions. I gratefully acknowledge the support of the College of Graduate Studies at Cleveland State University.     

A mechanism implementing the proportional solution

We consider the problem of a commonly owned technology which transforms a single input into a single output. We are interested in implementing a social choice rule called theproportional solution. We introduce a mechanism which implements the proportional solution in Nash, strong (Nash) and undominated Nash equilibria. In the mechanism each agent announces only two numbers which can be interpreted as the total output and her share of the total input-output combination. This paper was originally titled "Doubly implementing the proportional solution." I would like to thank my advisor William Thomson for his detailed comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank Jeffrey Banks and Sung-Whee Shin for their comments. Two anonymous referees and an editor’s comments improved this paper substantially.     

Employee Awareness of Workplace Violence Policies and Perceptions for Addressing Perpetrators at Colleges and Universities

Most of the research on workplace violence has focused on workplace violence incidents and the development of models to predict and address the phenomenon. The assumption that all organizations are essentially similar in nature underlies this research. However, colleges and universities differ from for-profit businesses. Little, if any, research has been conducted to determine employees’ awareness of workplace violence policies and employee perceptions of potential perpetrators and how to address perpetrators which is necessary for increasing such policies’ effectiveness. The present study examines the awareness of employees at a large, public university in the Midwestern United States concerning WPV. Respondents indicate which sources they perceive to be likely perpetrators of workplace violence, and the actions that organization should take if WPV occurs. Based on this information, steps to increase employee awareness of workplace violence policies in colleges and universities are suggested.     

Global human development: accounting for its regional disparities

This study’s multilevel statistical models quantify the effects of civilization zones and instrumental factors on the capacities for human agency that a country provides its citizens. These capacities are measured by the UN’s human development index, which synthesizes measures of literacy, longevity, and income. Indicators of political democracy, slavery, national debt, corruption, and internal conflict gauge the instrumental factors. Political freedom and emancipative employment coupled with civil order account for the regional differences in human development scores; civilization zones, heavily indebted poor countries, and corruption influence the variability among countries within the regions.     

8. The Grounding of Forgiveness: Martha Nussbaum on Compassion and Mercy

Violence came to define the twentieth century. We live in fear that an even more extreme violence will characterize the twenty‐first century. The city of Hiroshima was the victim of the greatest single stroke of violence in the history of humanity. Yet it managed to arise, Phoenix‐like, as a city devoted to peace in the aftermath of nuclear horror. How was this extraordinary forgiveness possible? Is it possible that it was born out of a compassion for the victims of nuclear holocaust that extended beyond its immediate borders? In several works, but most notably in Upheavals of Thought, Martha Nussbaum has analyzed the conditions for the occurrence of compassion. She has also subjected her largely Aristotelian analysis of compassion to a Stoic‐inspired critique. This paper will reconstruct Nussbaum's analysis, critique, and defense of compassion. I will then extend Nussbaum's analysis to argue how a forgiveness rooted in compassion, rather than mercy, might be possible. The city of Hiroshima's dedication to worldwide peace in the aftermath of nuclear horror is used to illustrate a compassion‐based forgiveness.     

延安民俗旅游发展研究

民俗旅游资源是旅游资源中极具活力的重要因素,民俗旅游日益成为现代旅游的一大热潮。延安民俗旅游资源丰富多彩,本文针对延安民俗旅游开发中存在的问题,提出了民俗旅游的发展对策,为延安民俗旅游发展的实践提供依据。     

Utilization of family-friendly policies in Hong Kong

Employees in Hong Kong, like those in many other industrialized societies, face the competing demands of work and family. Long working hours and the associated problem of work–family conflict is a serious problem for the workforce. Although a number of family-friendly policies, such as the five-day working week, paternal leave and so on, have been introduced, they are not necessarily used to their fullest extent. This paper examines the utilization of family-friendly incentives using a telephone survey of 661 employees in Hong Kong with access to such measures. Its major strength is the use of a well-established model of health care utilization, the Andersen model, to conceptualize the factors associated with the uptake of family-friendly policies. The results indicate that the Andersen model works very well in this context, and further demonstrate that access to family-friendly policies in Hong Kong is not equitable. The study makes a number of significant contributions to the literature on work–life balance and the uptake of supportive measures, and shows that enabling (such as perceived effectiveness) rather than need factors explain most of the variance in such use.     

CREATING A LAB IN THE FIELD: ECONOMICS EXPERIMENTS FOR POLICYMAKING

In this paper, I focus on the role that artefactual and certain framed field experiments (what I term “lab‐like field experiments” or LFEs) play in informing policymaking. Using examples, primarily from rural contexts in developing countries, I identify four main purposes of LFEs: (1) to test theories or heuristic principles; (2) to identify and estimate parameters associated with characteristics; (3) to explore the structural nature of parameters derived from empirical methods including other types of experiments; and (4) to assess methodological difficulties associated with LFEs and how these can impact parameter estimates. I address the importance of generalizability for LFEs that are intended to inform policymaking and in the process, emphasize the complementary role between LFEs and other empirical methods, in particular other experiments. Finally, I discuss nine basic principles for conducting LFEs and suggest four directions for future research.     

A model of the Soviet firm

Conclusion The Liberman reforms of 1962 modify the above model somewhat, though they do not change it in any fundamental way. The problem of systematic misinformation is attacked by opting for a bonus based not on profit achieved but rather, on an average of the profit achieved and the planned profit. Thus there is an incentive to divulge more information, but the awareness (on the part of managers) that higher performance will affect bonus norms is not removed. Also, because it is profits that determine bonuses, a firm now has an incentive to reduce costs — if it keeps its output constant (and thus the output norm constant) it can still get a higher bonus by reducing costs and hence increasing profits. But, clearly, this too fails; we have merely added another dimension to the conflict. Managers will soon recognize that not only output norms but also profitability norms are sensitive to achieved output and profit. Thus the Liberman reforms, though implicitly recognizing the problems involved, do not introduce the structural changes needed to remove the conflict. This paper was originally (April 1968) presented in Professor Granick's seminar on the Soviet economy (University of Wisconsin; Madison). I'd like to express my thanks to Professor Granick for the helpful additions which resulted from his patient and always stimulating comments. Errors are, of course, solely the responsibility of the author.     

Social identity, inequality and conflict

I extend the standard materialistic rational choice model of conflict to consider groups. In particular, I consider how the aggregate amount of conflict in society depends on which groups form and oppose each other. The study is motivated by empirical findings about the relationship between inequality, conflict and economic development. I focus on a salient comparison: ethnic groups vs. social classes. I show that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, class conflict is not necessarily worse than ethnic conflict. In fact, ethnic conflict is general worse when the distribution of income is more equal. I also investigate the impact of the fact that while ethnicity is immutable, since there is social mobility, class is not. I show that the direct impact of mobility of conflict is as conventionally believed, but that there are important indirect effects which make the net effect ambiguous. Received: June, 1998 / Accepted: November 22, 1999     

Positive effects of conflict: A cognitive perspective

Managers rated the extent to which conflict produces both positive and negative effects. Results indicated that they rated several negative effects significantly higher than any positive effects. However, virtually all managers reported personal experiences in which conflict yielded beneficial outcomes. These and other findings suggest that practicing managers perceive conflict as having the potential to yield positive as well as negative effects. A review of recent literature on human cognition identified several factors that may play a role in determining whether conflict yields predominantly positive or negative effects. These factors include the impact of strong negative emotions on cognition, stereotype-driven thinking, and attributional processes. Techniques for modifying conflict situations so that they are more likely to result in positive effects are suggested.     

Adjusting for cultural differences,a new DEA model applied to a merged bank

The usefulness and application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) efficiency measurements is usually limited by the requirement of consistent operating circumstances. However, in many real world situations this is not the case, so to overcome this problem, this paper reports on a new strategy by inventing a Culturally Adjusted DEA model to benchmark business units that operate under different cultural (business) environments. This is especially useful when these environmental factors are partial causes of inefficiency and can not be simply incorporated into a DEA model as inputs or outputs. A simulation analysis is conducted to examine the effectiveness of the CA-DEA model for controlling these environmental effects. This model is applied to a real life efficiency study of two major financial firms in Canada in 2000, when the two entities started to consolidate and merge their branch networks. Two cultural indices are identified to represent a firm’s unique operating environment, one to capture the nature of a firm’s corporate strategies (Corporate Index), and the other to estimate the effectiveness of a firm’s operational systems (Service Index). The results show that a firm’s corporate culture has a significant influence on its branches’ efficiency and this, we found, is often neglected in such studies. This paper also makes a contribution to the bank merger literature by providing an internal view of the potential benefits that may result from sharing cultural advantages while identifying the true managerial inefficiencies.     

The Extent and Evolution of Productivity Deficiency in Eastern Germany

Since the German re-unification in 1990, Eastern Germany has been a transition economy. After a phase of catching up in productivity with Western Germany from 1991 to 1996, growth rates in the producing sector have dropped below those in Western Germany since 1997. This study investigates whether this macroeconomic picture holds at the microeconomic level. For the special case of Eastern Germany, I suggest identifying productivity gaps by using comparable Western German firms as a “productivity benchmark”. Applying an econometric matching procedure allows to study the productivity gap at the firm level in detail. Besides labor and capital, other factors like innovation and firm ownership are taken into account. The macroeconomic facts are broadly confirmed: a significant gap has remained in recent years. Moreover, Eastern German innovators perform worse than their Western German pendants, and firms owned by Western German or foreign companies perform better than those owned by Eastern German entities.