Abstract not found

Estimating the impact of economic conditions on the likelihood of civil conflict is difficult because of endogeneity and omitted variable bias. We use rainfall variation as an instrumental variable for economic growth in 41 African countries during 1981–99. Growth is strongly negatively related to civil conflict: a negative growth shock of five percentage points increases the likelihood of conflict by one-half the following year. We attempt to rule out other channels through which rainfall may affect conflict. Surprisingly, the impact of growth shocks on conflict is not significantly different in richer, more democratic, or more ethnically diverse countries. I.

Abstract: Using a sample of 32 developed and developing countries we analyze the empirical characteristics of sudden stops in capital flows and the relevance of balance sheet effects in the likelihood of their materialization. We find that large real exchange rate (RER) fluctuations coming hand in hand with Sudden Stops are basically an emerging market (EM) phenomenon. Sudden Stops seem to come in bunches, grouping together countries that are different in many respects. However, countries are similar in that they remain vulnerable to large RER fluctuations—be it because they could be forced to large adjustments in the absorption of tradable goods, and/or because the size of dollar liabilities in the banking system (i.e., domestic liability dollarization, or DLD) is high. Openness, understood as a large supply of tradable goods that reduces leverage over the current account deficit, coupled with DLD, are key determinants of the probability of Sudden Stops. The relationship between Openness and DLD in the determination of the probability of Sudden Stops is highly non-linear, implying that the interaction of high current account leverage and high dollarization may be a dangerous cocktail.

Abstract International peacebuilding can improve the prospects that a civil war will be resolved. Although peacebuilding strategies must be designed to address particular conflicts, broad parameters that fit most conflicts can be identified. Strategies should address the local roots of hostility; the local capacities for change; and the (net) specific degree of international commitment available to assist change. One can conceive of these as the three dimensions of a triangle, whose area is the "political space"-or effective capacity-for building peace. We test these propositions with an extensive data set of 124 post-World War Two civil wars and find that multilateral, United Nations peace operations make a positive difference. UN peacekeeping is positively correlated with democratization processes after civil war and multilateral enforcement operations are usually successful in ending the violence. Our study provides broad guidelines to design the appropriate peacebuilding strategy, given the mix of hostility, local capacities, and international capacities. 1

www.nber.org/~jwolfers The “Easterlin Paradox ” suggests that there is no link between the level of economic development of a society and average levels of happiness. We return to Easterlin’s question: “Will raising the incomes of all increase the happiness of all? ” and analyze multiple rich datasets spanning recent decades and a broader array of countries. We establish a clear positive link between GDP and average levels of subjective well-being across countries with no evidence of a satiation point beyond which wealthier countries have no further increases in subjective well-being. Moreover, we show that this relationship is consistent with the relationship between income and happiness within countries, suggesting a minimal role for relative income comparisons as drivers of happiness. Finally, we examine the relationship between changes in subjective well-being and income over time within countries, finding that economic growth has been associated with rising happiness.

This paper considers the nonparametric and semiparametric methods for estimating regression models with continuous endogenous regressors. We list a number of different generalizations of the linear structural equation model, and discuss how three common estimation approaches for linear equations — the “instrumental variables, ” “fitted value, ” and “control function ” approaches — may or may not be applicable to nonparametric generalizations of the linear model and to their semiparametric variants. The discussion then turns to a particular semiparametric model, the binary response model with linear index function and nonparametric error distribution, and describes in detail how estimation of the parameters of interest can be constructed using the “control function ” approach. This estimator is then applied to an empirical problem of the relation of labor force participation to nonlabor income, viewed as an endogenous regressor.

It is often argued that child labor comes at the expense of schooling and so perpetuates poverty for children from poor families. To test this claim we study the effects on children’s labor force participation and school enrollments of the pure school-price change induced by a targeted enrollment subsidy in rural Bangladesh. Our theoretical model predicts that the subsidy increases schooling, but its effect on child labor is ambiguous. Our empirical model indicates that the subsidy increased schooling by far more than it reduced child labor. Substitution effects helped protect current incomes from the higher school attendance induced by the subsidy.

A booming quantitative literature on large-scale political violence has identified important economic and political determinants of civil war. That literature has treated civil war as an aggregate category and has not considered if identity (ethnic/religious) wars have different causes than non-identity wars. In this paper, I argue that this is an important distinction and that identity wars are predominantly due to political grievance rather than lack of economic opportunity. Ethnic heterogeneity is also associated differently with identity than non-identity wars. Some systemic variables are also important determinants of civil war and these have been neglected in the existing literature. An important new result is that living in a bad neighborhood, with undemocratic neighbors or neighbors at war, significantly increases a country’s risk of experiencing ethnic civil war.

At the heart of many econometric models is a linear function and a normal error. Examples include the classical small-sample linear regression model and the probit, ordered probit, multinomial probit, Tobit, interval regression, and truncated-distribution regression models. Because the normal distribution has a natural multidimensional generalization, such models can be combined into multi-equation systems in which the errors share a multivariate normal distribution. The literature has historically focused on multi-stage procedures for estimating mixed models, which are more efficient computationally, if less so statistically, than maximum likelihood (ML). But faster computers and simulated likelihood methods such as the Geweke, Hajivassiliou, and Keane (GHK) algorithm for estimating higher-dimensional cumulative normal distributions have made direct ML estimation practical. ML also facilitates a generalization to switching, selection, and other models in which the number and types of equations vary by observation. The Stata module cmp fits Seemingly Unrelated Regressions (SUR) models of this broad family. Its estimator is also consistent for recursive systems in which all endogenous variables appear on the right-hand-sides as observed. If all the equations are structural, then estimation is full-information maximum likelihood (FIML). If only the final stage or stages are, then it is limited-information maximum likelihood (LIML). cmp can mimic a dozen built-in Stata commands and several user-written ones. It is also appropriate for a panoply of models previously hard to estimate. Heteroskedasticity, however, can render it inconsistent. This paper explains the theory and implementation of cmp and of a related Mata function, ghk2(), that implements the GHK algorithm.

Habit is a frequently mentioned but understudied cause of political action. This article provides the first direct test of the hypothesis that casting a ballot in one election increases one’s propensity to go to the polls in the future. A field experiment involving 25,200 registered voters was conducted prior to the November general election of 1998. Subjects were randomly assigned to treatment conditions in which they were urged to vote through direct mail or face-to-face canvassing. Compared to a control group that received no contact, the treatment groups were significantly more likely to vote in 1998. The treatment groups were also significantly more likely to vote in local elections held in November of 1999. After deriving a statistical estimator to isolate the effect of habit, we find that, ceteris paribus, voting in one election substantially increases the likelihood of voting in the future. Indeed, the influence of past voting exceeds the effects of age and education reported in previous studies. For the better part of a century, political scientists have charted individual and group differences in political participation. Scholars such as Harold Gosnell (1927) observed early on that voter turnout rates differed markedly among groups defined by ethnicity, class, gender, and region. In the 1950s, these aggregate