How does a rebel group's access to funding affect its fighting capacity? Using a district-year panel of fatal Maoist incidents in India between 2005 and 2011, I find that deficient rainfall spurs ...targeted Maoist violence against civilians but that the number of Maoist attacks against security forces increases only in mining districts. The relationship between income shocks and conflict depends on the type of targets and the revenue sources of the rebels. In particular, the fighting capacity of a rebel group appears to benefit more from negative income shocks if the group's tax base is sufficiently independent from the agricultural economy.
Can tax regimes shape the incentives to engage in armed conflict? Indian mining royalties benefit the states but are set by the central government. India's Maoist belt is mineral rich, and states are ...responsible for counterinsurgency operations. We exploit the introduction of a 10% ad valorem tax on iron ore that increased royalty collections of the affected states by a factor of 10. We find that the royalty hike was followed by a significant intensification of violence in districts with important iron ore deposits. The royalty increase was also followed by an increase in illegal mining activity in iron mines.
Security Transitions Fetzer, Thiemo; Souza, Pedro C. L.; Eynde, Oliver Vanden ...
IDEAS Working Paper Series from RePEc,
07/2021, Letnik:
111, Številka:
7
Journal Article, Paper
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
How do foreign powers disengage from a conflict? We study this issue by examining the recent, large-scale security transition from international troops to local forces in the ongoing civil conflict ...in Afghanistan. We construct a new dataset that combines information on this transition process with declassified conflict outcomes and previously unreleased quarterly survey data of residents’ perceptions of local security. Our empirical design leverages the staggered roll-out of the transition, and employs a novel instrumental variables approach to estimate the impact. We find a significant, sharp, and timely decline of insurgent violence in the initial phase: the security transfer to Afghan forces. We find that this is followed by a significant surge in violence in the second phase: the actual physical withdrawal of foreign troops. We argue that this pattern is consistent with a signaling model, in which the insurgents reduce violence strategically to facilitate the foreign military withdrawal to capitalize on the reduced foreign military presence afterward. Our findings clarify the destabilizing consequences of withdrawal in one of the costliest conflicts in modern history, and yield potentially actionable insights for designing future security transitions.
This paper estimates the impact of military recruitment during World War I on human capital accumulation in colonial Punjab. The empirical strategy exploits the exogenous increase in recruitment by ...the Indian Army during the war. Higher military recruitment is found to be associated with increased literacy at the district-religion level. The observed improvement in the human capital stock appears to be driven by the informal acquisition of literacy skills by serving soldiers.
Trickle-Down Ethnic Politics Vanden Eynde, Oliver; Kuhn, Patrick M.; Moradi, Alexander
American economic journal. Economic policy,
08/2018, Letnik:
10, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
How does ethnic politics affect the state’s ability to provide policing services? Using a panel of administrative personnel data on the full careers of 6,784 police officers, we show how the rise of ...ethnic politics around Kenya’s independence influenced policemen’s behavior. We find a significant deterioration in discipline after Kenya’s first multiparty election for those police officers of ethnic groups associated with the ruling party. These effects are driven by a behavioral change among these policemen. We find no evidence of favoritism within the police. Instead, our results are consistent with co-ethnic officers experiencing an emboldenment effect. Our findings highlight that the state’s security apparatus, at its most granular level, is not insulated from ethnic politics.
Can tax regimes shape the incentives to engage in armed conflict? Indian mining royalties benefit the states but are set by the central government. India's Maoist belt is mineral rich, and states are ...responsible for counterinsurgency operations. We exploit the introduction of a 10% ad valorem tax on iron ore that increased royalty collections of the affected states by a factor of 10. We find that the royalty hike was followed by a significant intensification of violence in districts with important iron ore deposits. The royalty increase was also followed by an increase in illegal mining activity in iron mines.
Politically-driven corruption is a pervasive challenge for development, but evidence of its welfare effects are scarce. Using data from a major rural road construction programme in India we document ...political influence in a setting where politicians have no official role in contracting decisions. Exploiting close elections to identify the causal effect of coming to power, we show that the share of contractors whose name matches that of the winning politician increases by 83% (from 4% to 7%) in the term after a close election compared to the term before. Regression discontinuity estimates at the road level show that political interference raises the cost of road construction and increases the likelihood that roads go missing.
India's Maoist movement is often thought to be rooted in economic deprivation. A review of the emerging literature and descriptive evidence from a district-level data set on Maoist conflict indicates ...that the relationship between underdevelopment and Maoist activity cannot be explained in simple economic terms. At the state level, Maoist conflict-affected states have similar growth trends and do not score lower on development measures. In a cross section of districts, the most robust predictor of Maoist activity is forest cover, which could reflect the importance of strategic terrain factors as well as the relevance of forest rights and forest produce.
Environ 10 % de la population mondiale sont classés comme vivant dans une « extrême pauvreté » par la Banque mondiale. Ces populations sont concentrées dans les pays du Sud. Au cours des vingt ...dernières années, les économistes du développement ont mis au point des outils puissants et pratiques pour aider à élaborer des politiques améliorant la vie des pauvres. Toutefois, les progrès dans ce domaine sont loin d’être garantis, car les crises politiques, les conflits et le changement climatique ...
Environ 10 % de la population mondiale sont classés comme vivant dans une « extrême pauvreté » par la Banque mondiale. Ces populations sont concentrées dans les pays du Sud. Au cours des vingt ...dernières années, les économistes du développement ont mis au point des outils puissants et pratiques pour aider à élaborer des politiques améliorant la vie des pauvres. Toutefois, les progrès dans ce domaine sont loin d’être garantis, car les crises politiques, les conflits et le changement climatique ...
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