José García Montalvo

Ethnic Polarization, Potential Conflict, and Civil Wars

This paper analyzes the relationship between ethnic fractionalization, polarization, and conflict. In recent years many authors have found empirical evidence that ethnic fractionalization has a negative effect on growth. One mechanism that can explain this nexus is the effect of ethnic heterogeneity on rent-seeking activities and the increase in potential conflict, which is negative for investment. However the empirical evidence supporting the effect of ethnic fractionalization on the incidence of civil conflicts is very weak. Although ethnic fractionalization may be important for growth, we argue that the channel is not through an increase in potential ethnic conflict. We discuss the appropriateness of indices of polarization to capture conflictive dimensions. We develop a new measure of ethnic heterogeneity that satisfies the basic properties associated with the concept of polarization. The empirical section shows that this index of ethnic polarization is a significant variable in the explanation of the incidence of civil wars. This result is robust to the presence of other indicators of ethnic heterogeneity, other sources of data for the construction of the index, and other data structures.

Do Educated Leaders Matter

This article uses data on more than 1,000 political leaders between 1875 and 2004 to investigate whether having a more educated leader affects the rate of economic growth. We use an expanded set of random leadership transitions because of natural death or terminal illness to show, following an earlier paper by Jones and Olken (2005), that leaders matter for growth. We then provide evidence supporting the view that heterogeneity among leaders’ educational attainment is important with growth being higher by having leaders who are more highly educated.

Voting after the Bombings: A Natural Experiment on the Effect of Terrorist Attacks on Democratic Elections

Can terrorist attacks be timed to change the outcome of democratic elections? In this paper, we analyze the electoral impact of the terrorist attacks of March 11, 2004, in Madrid. Studies using individual level postelectoral survey data reach contradictory conclusions. We propose an alternative approach. Since the bombings took place only three days before the 2004 congressional election, we can find a control group of individuals who cast their vote before the terrorist attacks. The results indicate that the attacks had an important electoral impact, rejecting the hypothesis that the identity of the winner was unaffected by the terrorist attacks.

Does Foreign Aid Help

Recently, Sachs et al. (2004) have argued in favor of a massive increase in foreign aid to Africa in order to escape from a poverty trap. They propose to increase the capital stock in one step, through a large, well-targeted infusion of foreign assistance. In this article we show that foreign aid has a negative impact on the democratic stance of developing countries, and on economic growth by reducing investment and increasing government consumption. Therefore, our empirical findings do not support the Sachs proposal.

Religious polarization and economic development

Abstract This paper analyzes the effect of religious diversity on economic development. We argue that the religious polarization index is more appropriate to measure the effect of potential conflict on economic development than the traditional fragmentation index. The empirical exercises support this view.

Why ethnic fractionalization? Polarization, ethnic conflict and growth

This paper ia an attempt to clarify the relationship between fractionalization, polarization and conflict. The literature on the measurement of ethnic diversity has taken as given that the proper measure for heterogeneity can be calculated by using the fractionalization index. This index is widely used in industrial economics and, for empirical purposes, the ethnolinguistic fragmentation is ready available for regression exercises. Nevertheless the adequacy of a synthetic index of hetergeneity depends on the intrinsic characteristics of the heterogeneous dimension to be measured. In the case of ethnic diversity there is a very strong conflictive dimension. For this reason we argue that the measure of heterogeneity should be one of the class of polarization measures. In fact the intuition of the relationship between conflict and fractionalization do not hold for more than two groups. In contrast with the usual problem of polarization indices, which are of difficult empirical implementation without making some arbitrary choice of parameters, we show that the RQ index, proposed by Reynal-Querol (2002), is the only discrete polarization measure that satisfies the basic properties of polarization. Additionally we present a derivation of the RQ index from a simple rent seeking model. In the empirical section we show that while ethnic polarization has a positive effect on civil wars and, indirectly on growth, this effect is not present when we use ethnic fractionalization.

Comparing cointegrating regression estimators: Some additional Monte Carlo results

Abstract This paper compares the finite sample performance of the canonical correlation regression estimator (CCR) and Stock and Watsons (A simple estimator of cointegration vectors in higher order integrated systems, Econometrica, 1993, 61(4), 783–820) dynamic ordinary least squares estimator (DOLS) using the models proposed by Inder (Journal of Econometrics, 1993, 57, 53–68). The CCR estimator shows smaller bias than the OLS and the fully modified. The DOLS estimator performs systematically better than the CCR estimator.

Liquidity and market makers: a pseudo-experimental analysis with ultrahigh frequency data

An analysis is given of the effect of market makers on liquidity using a transaction-level database. For this purpose, the focus is on a financial market where a change in regulations created explicitly the category of market maker in 1997 and that date is used to construct a pseudo-experiment. In contrast with other studies that use ultrahigh frequency data, the days to be analysed are selected using a statistical procedure to match observations before and after the change in regulation. The propensity score is used to perform the matching. After choosing the days, an estimate of an ordered probit model is made to explain the intraday behaviour of price changes. The coefficient estimates from the ordered probit model are used to calculate a measure of liquidity based on the steepness of the response function of price changes to volume. The results show that liquidity, measured in this way, has not been affected by the introduction of the market makers.

The microeconomics of corruption: Applications

We review microeconomic research on corruption from the last 30 years. We start by analyzing the seminal models of corruption built on three-tier, delegation models. Then, we go into more detail on the context of corrupt deals, and discuss the main economic factors that affect corruption. We discuss incentives and compensation in bureaucracies, and the interplay of market and bureaucratic structure. Competition and contract design will also be reviewed in relation to procurement under corruptible agents. After reviewing the theoretical contributions, we turn to the empirical evidence. We begin discussing measurement issues, and then move to the analysis of the empirical evidence relative to the theoretical models discussed in previous sections. Finally, we cover several anti-corruption mechanisms proposed in the literature and discuss their relative merits as devices to control or eliminate illegal activities.

Chapter 18 - Cultural Diversity, Conflict, and Economic Development

Abstract Are cultural differences good or bad for economic development? Can cultural differences generate conflicts and, therefore, retard economic development? Or can cultural diversity spur creativity and improve economic welfare? These are the type of questions that this chapter addresses. There are many channels through which a diverse society may affect the economic and social outcomes of countries, cities, or villages. The debate usually concentrates on empirical results based on the use of general indices that try to summarize many phenomena at the same time. The use of these indices brings also more debate into the topic, since the construction of indices always implies an hypothesis of how we believe the distribution of culturally diverse groups affects the outcome. To understand why ethnic diversity affects conflict and economic development, we first need to understand which indices best capture the channels through which cultural diversity affects economic outcomes. The chapter also reviews evidence on the effect of specific cultural arrangements on the economic development of regions and countries.