Conflict heterogeneity in Africa

The economic development literature widely concurs that conflicts have adverse economic consequences that contribute to poverty, disinvestment and lower human capital leading to widespread inequality and lower economic growth. As such, understanding the nature of conflict has been an important focus for political leaders, policymakers and researchers alike. However, the existing literature does not typically distinguish between the effects of conflict determinants on conflicts by type of actor or aggressor (i.e. state, group and civilian-based). Using panel data analysis for 46 African countries from 1997 to 2017, and a comprehensive geo-referenced Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) conflict dataset, we find evidence of variation in the determinants' effects on conflicts by actor types. For the full sample of countries, we find that military expenditure decreases civilian-based conflicts; globalisation increases both state- and civilian-based conflicts while state fragility increases group-based conflicts. On the other hand, income per capita increases all three types of conflicts. At regional level, we find variation in the effects of military expenditure and globalisation on state- and civilian-based conflicts. However, we find little variation in the effects of the determinants on group-based conflicts across the regions. The findings highlight the nuances in conflicts by actor types and their causes which need to be accounted for when formulating conflict resolution policies.     

Growing apart in early modern Europe? A comparison of inequality trends in Italy and the Low Countries, 1500–1800

This article provides a comparison of long-term changes in inequality in two key areas of preindustrial Europe: Central-Northern Italy and the Low Countries. Based on new archival material, we reconstruct regional estimates of economic inequality during 1500–1800 and use them to assess the role of economic growth, social-demographic variables, proletarianization, and institutions. We argue that different explanations should be invoked to understand the early modern growth of inequality throughout Europe since several factors conspired to make for a society in which it was much easier for inequality to rise than to fall. Although long-term trends in economic inequality were apparently similar across the continent, divergence occurred in terms of inequality extraction ratios.     

环境污染与环境冲突——基于省际空间面板数据的研究

环境问题具有很强的空间相关性,任何忽视这种空间相关性的研究都会导致估计结果产生偏差。本文使用2003-2011年省际面板数据,运用空间计量分析方法,分析了环境污染与环境冲突的关系以及当前环境治理的社会效果。研究结果表明:环境冲突具有显著的空间相关性;水污染是引发环境冲突的主要原因,并且具有显著的空间外溢性;当前的环境治理并没有减少环境冲突的产生,其社会效益不明显;环境治理需从环境和社会两个方面着手,调节各冲突主体的利益诉求;由于环境污染具有较强的外溢性,需实行跨域治理。     

Roles of Income Polarization,Income Inequality and Ethnic Fractionalization in Social Conflicts: An Empirical Study of Indonesian Provinces, 2002–2012

Previous studies have cited inequality as a major factor relating to conflicts in Indonesia, while consideration of polarization and fractionalization as drivers of conflict is limited. The current paper examined the roles of three indices (polarization, inequality and fractionalization) in explaining the incidence of conflicts in Indonesian provinces over 2002–2012. This study used income (proxied by expenditure) differences to measure polarization and inequality, with subnational data as the unit of analysis. In addition, to complete the analysis, the present study used a variety of socioeconomic indicators as additional control variables. This paper verified that the high degrees of income polarization, ethnic fractionalization and income inequality are associated with the high probability of conflicts in Indonesian provinces. It also found that socioeconomic factors such as poverty, unemployment, population and natural resources, as well as some types of local government spending are significantly associated with conflicts.     

Economic nationalism and economic integration: the Austro‐Hungarian Empire in the late nineteenth century 1

This article seeks to square two seemingly contradictory strands in the literature on economic development in the late nineteenth‐century Habsburg Empire. On the one hand, there is an extensive historiography stressing the rise of nationalism and its close correlate of growing efforts to organize economic life along ethno‐linguistic lines. On the other, there is a substantial body of research that emphasizes significant improvements in market integration across the empire as an outcome of the diffusion of industrialization and an expanding railway network, among other factors. In this article, it is argued that the process of market integration was systematically asymmetric, shaped by intensifying intra‐empire nationality conflicts. While grain markets in Austria‐Hungary became overall more integrated over time, they also became systematically biased: regions with a similar ethno‐linguistic composition of their population came to display significantly smaller price gaps between each other than regions with different compositions. The emergence and persistence of this differential integration cannot be explained by changes in infrastructure and transport costs, simple geographical features, asymmetric integration with neighbouring regions abroad, or communication problems. Instead, differential market integration along ethno‐linguistic lines was driven by the formation of ethno‐linguistic networks due to intensifying conflict between groups—economic nationalism mattered.     

Changing Land Tenure Arrangements and Access to Primary Assets under Globalization: A Case Study of Two Villages in Anglophone Cameroon

Abstract: This paper illustrates how, in relation to globalization, formal and informal land institutions are prone to generate conflict over land rights and examines the implications of such conflicts on security levels of access to primary assets for the poor in two villages in Cameroon — Vekovi and Ekona. The land laws in Cameroon are an outcome of its colonial heritage and exist alongside the communal tenure system. As the issue of land awareness comes to the fore, engendered partly by population pressure, relative price changes and the commoditization of land, conflicts develop: farmer–grazer conflicts in Vekovi, and farmer–farmer and indigenous people–state conflicts in Ekona. The rent‐seeking attitude of administrative and judicial authorities, who use inconsistencies in the dual tenure system, reduces the possibility of negotiating lasting solutions to land‐related conflicts in these villages. The social cost of this behaviour is not limited only to mutual distrust but also includes the opportunity costs of both time and financial resources mobilized by the parties in conflict to follow‐up legal procedures. The informal land tenure system generally operates in opposition to the national land laws in our case study villages, an atmosphere that generates or exacerbates conflict situations that create insecurity and restrict productivity‐enhancing investments. Land markets are more buoyant in Ekona, which is relatively more cosmopolitan and with farm‐to‐market roads that are fairly developed, than in Vekovi, which experiences net out‐migration and is poorly accessible. As a more homogenous society with strong traditional conventions, land transfer in Vekovi remains biased in favour of males, while Ekona enjoys gender neutrality in access to land. Conflict adjudication in the case study villages would be more legitimate if both formal and informal interpretations inform the land dispute settlement mechanisms.     

Some reflections on ‘redistribution with growth’

Two aspects of this book (Redistribution with Growth) are considered: first, the method used in Chapter II to adjust growth rates of GNP for changes in income distribution; and second, the analysis in Chapter I that purports to provide further support for the Kuznets ‘hypothesis’, namely the tendency for inequality of income distribution to increase in the first stages of economic development and then to decline slightly after reaching a peak. As regards the first issue, the method used in the book is criticized on the grounds that (i) no clear interpretation can be given to the weights attributed to the income growth of individual income groups and (ii) no precise meaning can be attached to the adjusted growth rates obtained. In place of this method an alternative method is used, based on the Atkinson measure of inequality, and adjusted growth rates are shown for a number of countries on the basis of alternative valuations of ‘inequality aversion’, the interpretation of which — in terms of a trade-off between equality and total income — is claimed to be clearer and more precise. As regards the Kuznets hypothesis, the results of the book are challenged on two main counts. First, it is shown that correlations confined to the low-income countries yield statistically less significant results. Secondly, it is argued that there are various statistical biases in the data, one of which is the failure to take account of changes in relative prices faced by different groups in the course of economic development at an early stage.     

The inequality trap. A comparative analysis of social spending between 1880 and 1930

It is often assumed that the fight against inequality played an important role in the rise of the welfare state. However, using social transfers as an indicator of redistribution and three alternative proxies for inequality—the top income shares, the ratio of the GDP per capita to the unskilled wage, and the share of non‐family farms—this article shows that inequality did not favour the development of social policy between 1880 and 1930. On the contrary, social policy developed more easily in countries that were previously more egalitarian, suggesting that unequal societies were in a sort of inequality trap, where inequality itself was an obstacle to redistribution.     

INDONESIA'S CHANGING ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

Indonesia's regional socio-economic data base extends over 30 years, so it is now possible to draw conclusions about regional development dynamics since the 1970s. We examine economic growth, inequality, convergence, structural change, demographic dynamics and social indicators over this period. There continues to be great diversity in economic and social outcomes, but growth and social progress have been remarkably even: the poorest regions, located mainly in Eastern Indonesia, have generally performed about as well as the national average. The better performing regions include those that are the most ‘connected’ to the global economy. In this respect, Jakarta stands out, growing richer than the rest of the country over time. As expected, conflict is harmful to economic development. There is no clear natural resource story: the performance of the resource-rich provinces has varied considerably.     

Economic Inequality and Its Socioeconomic Impact

Income inequality is of fundamental interest not only to economists, but also to other social scientists. A substantial literature in economics and the social sciences has investigated the relationship between income inequality and economic growth, and a variety of social phenomena. The links between inequality and economic growth are explored as well as those between inequality and such key social variables as political conflict, education, health, and crime. The analysis in this paper follows a two-step process. First, a review of the empirical evidence relating inequality to growth and to each of the above social variables is undertaken. Second, the various causal mechanisms that have been proposed in the social science literature to explain those links are surveyed.     

Arresting the Sword of Damocles: The transition to the post-Malthusian era in Denmark

The Malthusian model is the subject of a fierce debate within economic history. Although the positive causal relationship postulated from living standards to population growth is relatively uncontroversial for preindustrial societies, this cannot be said for the other key relationship, diminishing returns due to fixed supplies of land. We argue that Denmark, which was characterized by extreme resource and environmental constraints until the final decades of the eighteenth century, provides an ideal setting for testing whether any society was ever truly Malthusian. We employ a cointegrated VAR model on Danish data from 1731 to 1800, finding evidence for diminishing returns until ca. 1775. Yet this relationship disappears in the late-eighteenth century, consistent with an increasing pace of technological progress and the emergence of what Unified Growth Theory has termed the “post-Malthusian” era.     

The Economic Cost of Violent Conflict: The Case of Maluku Province in Indonesia

Against the background of the socio-economic and political crises of 1998–2000 in Indonesia, one of its provinces, Maluku, endured its own internal conflicts between 1999 and 2004. The coincidence of these national and regional crises—the tumult affecting Indonesia as a whole and the conflict restricted to Maluku—make the impact of local conflict on Maluku’s economy hard to identify empirically. To solve this problem, we use a synthetic control method (SCM) to construct a synthetic control unit for Maluku based on other Indonesian provinces. Our findings support the view that the violence in Maluku between 1999 and 2004 shifted the regional economy onto a lower growth path.     

论政府收入再分配功能

利益矛盾分为纵向和横向两种。公平与效率问题和纵向、横向矛盾交织在一起。为了兼顾公平与效率,促进经济社会和谐发展,政府要通过干预,实现收入的再分配。在这个过程中,政府要①准确把握经济社会运行的阶段和各阶层的相对情况;②合理把握纵向利益矛盾的限度③科学把握横向利益矛盾的限度。改革开放以来政府收入再分配的经验,主要就是合理利用和发挥社会成员的横向利益矛盾,激发人们的劳动积极性,促进经济效率的提高;同时善于运用纵向利益矛盾,发挥政府的作用,保证社会的基本公平。     

Conflict in Africa: The Cost of Peaceful Behaviour

War provides economic opportunities, such as the capture ofvaluable natural resources, that are unavailable in peacetime.However, belligerents may prefer low-intensity conflict to totalwar when the former has a greater pay-off. This paper thereforeuses a two-actor model to capture the continuum from total warto complete peace that often characterises Africa's conflicts.This is in contrast to the existing literature, with its focuson mutually exclusive states of total war or complete peace,an assumption which is more relevant to Europe's inter-statewars than to Africa's civil wars. The paper also discusses waysto change the economic incentives of belligerents so that theirbehaviour becomes more peaceful.     

Long‐term trends in economic inequality: lessons from colonial Botswana, 1921–74

This article contributes to the growing literature on colonial legacies influencing long‐term development. It focuses on Botswana, a case where the post‐independence diamond‐led economy has been considered an economic success story, despite its high levels of inequality. Here it is argued that this pathway of rapid resource‐driven growth combined with increasing socio‐economic inequality had already started during the time of the colonial cattle economy, and that this older case is equally relevant for understanding long‐term growth‐inequality trends in Botswana and other natural‐resource‐dependent economies. Six social tables, covering the period 1921 to 1974, are constructed using colonial archives, government statistics, and anthropological records. Based on the social tables, income inequality is estimated in the colonial and early post‐independence eras, capturing both the formal and informal sectors of the economy. The article demonstrates how the creation of a cattle export sector in the 1930s brought new opportunities to access export incomes, and how this led to a polarization in cattle holdings and increasing income inequalities. Further, with the expansion of colonial administration, government wages forged ahead, increasing income inequality and causing a growing income divide between public and private formal employment.     

Decomposing income inequality in a backward pre‐industrial economy: Old Castile (Spain) in the middle of the eighteenth century

Research on economic inequality in early modern Europe is complicated by the lack of appropriate data for reconstructing income or wealth distributions. This article presents a study of income inequality in mid‐eighteenth‐century Old Castile (Spain) using the Ensenada Cadastre, a census conducted between 1749 and 1759. The article describes the information provided by this census and then discusses its advantages and disadvantages for reconstructing income profiles and calculating income inequality. This is followed by analysis of a dataset derived from the Cadastre that consists of more than 4,000 observations from Palencia (a province in northern Spain) and contains information on sources of household income, each household head's main occupation, residence location, and other household characteristics. Demographic data from this census is used to weight observations in the sample and thereby minimize selection bias. Findings show that inequality in eighteenth‐century Spain was probably substantial despite its relative backwardness; that the relationship between inequality and per capita income was not clear‐cut and was probably influenced by measurement of the higher incomes; and that although income inequality was largely driven by uneven land distribution, labour income also contributed to overall inequality—especially in urban centres.     

Theft under Stalin: a property rights analysis

Recent work on dictatorship has focused on how repression is used by dictators to eradicate political opposition. This article examines evidence from one of the most important dictatorships of the twentieth century to suggest that this may tell only half the story. As Stalin's dictatorship progressed, repression was increasingly administered neither by the secret police nor the military—as in most dictatorships—but through the ordinary courts. The article proposes an explanation, one broadly consistent with Olson's hypothesis that Stalin was a ‘proprietary dictator’, an autocrat with a long time horizon who made major investments in public goods. Stalin's new form of property—‘socialist property'—was one such public good. To legitimize the new form of ownership, Stalin ruled that it should be enforced through the ordinary justice system, albeit initially with high levels of repression. The article also makes two further contributions. It shows, first, how Stalin's theft campaigns are a striking historical example of what happens when an unpopular law clashes with social norms, and of how it might backfire. Second, it demonstrates how, as property rights theorists would predict, the main objects of theft legislation are generic or homogeneous goods with few property attributes.     

For a fistful of pesetas? The political economy of the army in a nonconsolidated democracy: the Second Spanish Republic and Civil War (1931–9)

This article focuses on the importance of military factionalism in a nonconsolidated democracy: the Spanish Republic (1931–9). It builds a new micro-dataset for over 11,000 officers during the Spanish Civil War (1936–9) to study how professional and economic interests created divisions within the military and influenced officers’ allegiances during the war. Results confirm that distributional conflicts influenced officers’ decisions in Republican-controlled territories: officers who gained from military reforms in the years before the civil war and those with more rapid promotions in the months predating the war were more likely to remain loyal to the government. This article also explores the behavioural determinants of officers’ propensity to rebel and finds that hierarchy mattered, as senior officers influenced subordinates’ choices of side.     

The Economic Cost of the War in Sri Lanka

This paper discusses some of the conceptual and methodological problems associated with assessing the economic costs of civil wars and other violent social conflicts, and presents an evaluation of the costs of the (still ongoing) conflict in Sri Lanka. Our estimates suggest that the costs of conflict since 1983 may be at least equivalent to twice Sri Lanka's 1996 GDP.