Aiding violence or peace? The impact of foreign aid on the risk of civil conflict in sub-Saharan Africa

This paper considers the impact of foreign aid flows on the risk of civil conflict. We improve on earlier studies on this topic by addressing the problem of the endogenous aid allocation using GDP levels of donor countries as instruments. A more structural addition to the literature is that we efficiently control for unobserved country specific effects in typical conflict onset and conflict continuation models by first differencing. The literature often overlooks the dynamic nature of these types of models, thereby forcing unlikely i.i.d. structures on the error terms implicitly.¹ As a consequence, malfunctioning institutions, deep-rooted political grievances, or any other obvious, yet unobserved and time persistent determinants of war are simply assumed away. We find a statistically significant and economically important negative effect of foreign aid flows on the probability of ongoing civil conflicts to continue (the continuation probability), such that increasing aid flows tends to decrease civil conflict duration. We do not find a significant relationship between aid flows and the probability of civil conflicts to start (the onset probability).     

The geography of natural resources,ethnic inequality and civil conflicts

We study whether the spatial distribution of natural resources across different ethnic groups within countries causes spatial inequality and the incidence of armed conflict. By providing a theoretical rent-seeking model and analysing a set of geo-coded data for mines, night-time light emissions, local populations and ethnic homelands, we show that the spatial distribution of resources is a major driving factor of ethnic income inequality. Moreover, a spatially unequal distribution of natural resources induces rent-seeking behaviour and thus increases the risk of civil conflicts. Consequently, we extend the perspective of the resource curse to explain cross-country differences in income inequality and the onset of civil conflicts.     

生态环境用水权的界定和分配

With the rapid development of population and economy, the conflict between the supply and demand of water resources is becoming outstanding increasingly. In China, many people concern about the problems of ecological environment water expenditure. However, owningto the shortage of water resources and indefinite water rights, "the hustle effect" of per capita water resource is appeared. Moreover, it caused a series of environment problems. This article differentiates and analyzes the relevant concepts about the ecological environment, and puts forward the defined concept of the rights to the ecological environment water utilization. In addition, it points out the characteristic of those rights, and does elementary study on the allocation principle, methods, and steps on the rights.     

Regional Inequality and Internal Conflict

This paper studies the influence of regional inequality within countries on internal conflicts. Regional inequalities are measured by the population‐weighted coefficient of variation of regional GDP per capita. As the main innovation, I use a panel dataset of country‐level regional inequalities, which covers 56 countries (835 subnational regions) between 1980 and 2009. I also consider a broader cross section dataset for the year 2005, which covers 110 countries (1569 subnational regions). Conflict is measured by the incidence of civil war (UCDP/PRIO data) and a risk measure of internal conflict (war, terrorism and riots) provided by the PRS Group's International Country Risk Guide. Logit estimations are employed as well as OLS fixed effects panel regressions. I find that regional inequalities increase the risk of internal conflict.     

Chicago's water market: dynamics of demand,prices and scarcity rents

Chicago and its suburbs are experiencing an increasing demand for water from a growing population and economy and may experience water scarcity in the near future. The Chicago metropolitan area has nearly depleted its groundwater resources to a point where interstate conflicts with Wisconsin could accompany an increased reliance on those sources. Further, the withdrawals from Lake Michigan is limited by the Supreme Court decree. The growing demand and indications of possible scarcity suggest a need to reexamine the pricing policies and the dynamics of demand. The study analyses the demand for water and develops estimates of scarcity rents for water in Chicago. The price and income elasticities computed at the means are -0.002 and 0.0002 respectively. The estimated scarcity rents ranges from $0.98 to $1.17 per thousand gallons. The results indicate that the current prices do not fully account for the scarcity rents and suggest a current rate with in the range $1.53 to $1.72 per thousand gallons.     

Make Trade Not War?

This paper analyses theoretically and empirically the relationship between military conflicts and trade. We show that the conventional wisdom that trade promotes peace is only partially true even in a model where trade is economically beneficial, military conflicts reduce trade, and leaders are rational. When war can occur because of the presence of asymmetric information, the probability of escalation is lower for countries that trade more bilaterally because of the opportunity cost associated with the loss of trade gains. However, countries more open to global trade have a higher probability of war because multilateral trade openness decreases bilateral dependence to any given country and the cost of a bilateral conflict. We test our predictions on a large data set of military conflicts on the 1950–2000 period. Using different strategies to solve the endogeneity issues, including instrumental variables, we find robust evidence for the contrasting effects of bilateral and multilateral trade openness. For proximate countries, we find that trade has had a surprisingly large effect on their probability of military conflict.     

Study on the Definition and Allocation of the Rights to Water Utilization in the Ecological Environment

With the rapid development of population and economy, the conflict between the supply and demand of water resources is becoming outstanding increasingly, In China, many people concern about the problems of ecological environment water expenditure.However, owning to the shortage of water resources and indefinite water rights, “the hustle effect” of per capita water resource is appeared, Moreover. it caused a series of environment problems. This article differentiates and analyzes the relevant concepts about the ecological enviromnent, and puts forward the defined concept of the rights to the ecological environment water utilization. In addition, it points out the characteristic of those rights, and does elementary study on the allocation principle, methods, and steps on the rights.     

Cyber Technology and the Arms Race

Cyber technology represents digital military capability with the purpose of causing damage to the military strength of a potential enemy. War using conventional weapons may be preceded by a strike using cyber technology. This paper introduces such technology into the theory of conflicts. The cost of war relative to the payoff from victory turns out to be crucial for the results on armament decisions. In the war game, two types of Nash equilibria may arise. One is subject to warfare while the other is not (‘equilibrium of terror’), depending on the perceived cost of war. In a symmetric war game, cyber capabilities are neutral with respect to the investments in conventional weapons, but they make wars more likely. Asymmetric access to cyber technology limits the international arms race with conventional weapons. A low success probability in the cyber programme encourages exercising the cyberattack option as the enemy may not have access to cyber capability. Uncertainty of the success of a cyber programme makes countries cautious when allocating resources not only to these programmes but also in conventional armament.     

Trade and civil conflict: Revisiting the cross‐country evidence

We revisit and expand the evidence on the impact of trade shocks on intra‐state conflict by using a large sample of developing countries in the 1960–2010 period. The results suggest that increases in the price of a country's exported commodities raise the country's risk of civil conflict and its duration. The effect on conflict risk is mainly driven by the price of point‐source commodities, in line with the rapacity effect theory of conflict. Intense trading with contiguous countries is associated with lower duration of conflict, consistent with the idea that such trade reduces the incentive of these countries to fuel conflict in their neighbor. Trading with neighbors is also associated with a lower risk of conflict when such trade occurs under trade agreements. On the other hand, we find no support for the opportunity cost theory via exported and imported commodities, nor via the economic cycle in export markets. We also identify a number of conditions under which the changes in the value of exported commodities cease to matter for conflict probability.     

Sourcing from conflict regions: Policies to improve transparency in international supply chains

In this paper, we study how unilateral policies concerning certain conflict raw materials influence prices, illegal mining activities, and welfare. Firms in the North import natural resources from the South to produce final consumption goods. In one of the countries in the South, local groups attempt to access natural resources, which results in rent‐seeking conflicts with the government and in illegal mining. We find that a unilateral embargo against the conflict country as well as certification of legal mines can reduce rent‐seeking and illegal mining with different welfare consequences in the countries involved.     

Drought and social conflict in rural Zimbabwe: Does the burden fall on women and girls?

Climate change–induced extreme weather events such as drought have occurred with increasing frequency and intensity in Zimbabwe over the past 30 years bringing about pressure on communally owned water resources. Using the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee 2020 survey of rural households in Zimbabwe, this study assesses the impact of drought shock on the occurrence of water point violence. The impact of self-reported drought shock on the likelihood of occurrence of social conflict in the form of water point violence is subject to confounding due to selection bias. Using the doubly robust inverse probability weighted regression adjustment to account for confounding, we investigate gender dimensions of the impact of drought on inducing water point violence in rural Zimbabwe. The study offers three major findings. First, drought shock is associated with increased household propensity to experience water point violence. Second, the severity of the drought shock impact increases the probability of the household experiencing water point violence. Third, drought shock–induced water point violence is only statistically valid for households where the water-fetcher is a woman or girl. The results suggest that the impact of drought shocks on water point violence is gendered and disadvantages women and girls more than men and boys.     

Deregulation and the determinants of network access: evidence from the German interurban bus industry

We investigate the characteristics of cities gaining access to the German interurban bus network in the first two years following the deregulation of the industry in January 2013. Applying both parametric and semi-parametric survival models, we find strong evidence that the probability of a city to be added to a provider’s network increases not only with the mere size of its population but also with further demographic characteristics such as average income or the share of young and old inhabitants. Additionally, while an increasing importance of tourism has a further positive effect, a rising automobile density is imposing a significantly negative impact on the probability of a city to gain access to the network.     

The Conflict Between Conservation and Recreation When Visitors Dislike Crowding: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of the Spatial Distribution of Recreational Beach Users

We investigate conflicts between wildlife conservation and recreational use that can occur at open-access sites when visitors dislike crowding. A theoretical model is proposed which determines the spatial distributions of visitors to a beach, given their willingness to walk to avoid crowding and the configuration of beach access points. This model is estimated for three sections of coastline in eastern England using data from aerial video photography. Visitor density is strongly and negatively correlated with distance from access points. Willingness to walk has a highly skewed population distribution. We discuss the implications of these findings for the management of conflicts between conservation and recreation at open-access sites.     

International trade of scarce water

Recent analyses of the evolution and structure of trade in virtual water revealed that the number of trade connections and volume of virtual water trade have more than doubled over the past two decades, and that developed countries increasingly import water embodied in goods from the rest of the world to alleviate pressure on domestic water resources. At the same time, as demand continues to increase and climate change threatens to alter hydrological cycles, water scarcity is a growing problem. Does research into virtual water trade need to consider water scarcity and differentiate flows out of water-scarce regions from flows out of water-abundant regions? Previous studies sum and compare virtual water volumes originating in countries experiencing vastly different degrees of water scarcity. We therefore incorporate water scarcity into an assessment of global virtual water flows. We use input–output analysis to include indirect virtual water flows. We find that the structure of global virtual water networks changes significantly after adjusting for water scarcity.     

Resource Curse or Not: A Question of Appropriability*

Whether natural resources are good or bad for a country's development are shown to depend on the interaction between institutional setting and, crucially, the types of resources possessed by the country. Some natural resources are, for economical and technical reasons, more likely to cause problems such as rent‐seeking and conflicts than others. This potential problem can, however, be countered by good institutional quality. In contrast to the traditional resource curse hypothesis, we show the impact of natural resources on economic growth to be non‐monotonic in institutional quality, and increasingly so for certain types of resources. In particular, countries rich in minerals are cursed only if they have low‐quality institutions, while the curse is reversed if institutions are sufficiently good. Furthermore, if countries are rich in diamonds and precious metals, these effects—both positive and negative—are larger.     

Conflict and the Social Contract*

We consider social contracts for resolving conflicts between two agents who are uncertain about each other's fighting potential. Applications include international conflict, litigation and elections. Even though only a peaceful agreement avoids a loss of resources, if this loss is small enough, then any contract must assign a positive probability of conflict. We show how the likelihood of conflict outbreak depends on the distribution of power between the agents and their information about each other.     

基于主要国家截面数据的虚拟水进口影响因素实证分析

基于39个主要国家的截面数据,选取反映资源、经济、制度、人口四个因素的11个变量,采用逐步回归分析方法对影响虚拟水进口量的因素进行实证分析。回归结果表明,国际储备、人均国内生产总值、耕地面积、粮食单产4个变量对虚拟水进口量具有显著影响且均具有正向效应。     

The long-term effects of civil conflicts on education,earnings, and fertility: Evidence from Cambodia

This paper examines the long-term effects of exposure to civil war and genocide on the educational attainment, earnings, and fertility of individuals in Cambodia. Given the well-documented causal links between schooling and labor productivity, it is surprising that past studies show that civil conflicts reduce educational attainment, but generally not earnings of individuals. Using variation in the degree of Cambodians’ exposure to civil conflicts during primary school age, we find that disruption to primary education during civil conflicts decreases educational attainment and earnings, increases fertility, and has negligible effects on health of individuals several decades later. Our findings suggest that the effect of conflict on schooling disruption has adverse consequences on long-term labor productivity and economic development.     

国外水资源可持续利用对策及对我国的启示

水资源是事关国计民生的基础性自然资源和战略性经济资源．也是国家综合国力的组成部分。以色列、新加坡和日本等水资源贫乏的发达国家在水资源可持续利用方面有着丰富的经验。例如,明确的法律规定、完善的政府管理体制、全面的节水意识和先进的水利技术等。本文在研究上述国家做法的基础上,结合我国水资源现状,对我国的水资源可持续利用提出了相应的对策建议。