Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy

Abstract

A copublication of the World Bank and Oxford University Press. This volume is a product of the staff of the World Bank. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the Board of Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. The boundaries, colors, denominations, and other information shown on any map in this work do not imply any judgment on the part of the World Bank concerning the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries.

Cross-Border Spillover: U.S. Gun Laws and Violence in Mexico

“…If we normalize these ‡ows by population, the "export rate" of the other two states are nearly three times as large as that of California. 22 A Hearst newspaper survey of guns tra¢ cked to Mexico from 44 court cases …led in the U.S. also found similar patterns: of 1,600 guns, 50% came from Texas, 29% came from Arizona, while 3% came from California (Freedman, 2011a). The article reporting on these …gures notes that California's strict gun laws appear to have "had the unintended consequence of making California gun stores unattractive to purchasers buying weapons for the Mexican drug cartels (ibid).…”

“…21 Since 2004, the Mexican government has sent about a quarter of its seized guns to eTrace to trace the origin of these weapons (GAO, 2009). 22 The ‡ows from New Mexico are relatively low as it is a small state. The data from BATF (used to generate Panel A of Figure III) reveals that the number of guns shops in border counties normalized by population is actually higher in NM (3.6) relative to either TX (2.0) or AZ (3.3).…”

“…Other studies have also suggested that CCW laws do not reduce criminality, based on empirical analyses (Ludwig, 1998 andDuggan, 2003), and theoretical models (Donohue and Levitt, 1998). 7 Contagion e¤ects of civil war (as discussed in Gleditsch, 2002;Gleditsch and Salehyan, 2007; Gleditsch, Salehyan and Schultz, 2008;and Salehyan, 2009) -arising from either spillovers in weapons (Collier et al, 2003) or other factors such as refugee movements (Salehyan and Gleditsch, 2006;Salehyan, 2008) and direct intervention by third parties (Gleditsch and Beardsley, 2004)-call into question the "closed polity" model of criminal homicides, many of which are connected to the drug trade. 8 Thus our analysis sheds light on the determinants of a new and growing form of violence around the globe -non-state actors using insurgent tactics to …ght for pro…ts in illegal markets rather than political power.…”

The costs of organized violence: a review of the evidence

“…They also feature a threshold of deathstypically, 1,000 per year. 6 Collier et al (2003) provide a comprehensive discussion of the different types of costs associated with civil wars and offer an overview of different quantitative estimates. The two edited volumes by Stewart and Fitzgerald (2001) also contain a number of country studies and overall evaluation of the effects of war on economic development.…”

Oil and the ‘new wars’: another look at the resource curse using alternative data

“…Resource-wealthy states are also accused of providing lower levels of public goods in terms of education and health, measured in terms of health outcomes and as health spending (Cockx and Francken 2014;Gylfason 2001;de Soysa and Gizelis 2013). Finally, resource wealth generates weak institutions (anarchic institutions) where groups organize armed violence for capturing rents, making a resource-dependent state prone to violence because either state institutions are too weak to monopolize violence or because the resources themselves invite looting, which in turn finances costly rebellion (Collier et al 2003;Fearon and Laitin 2001;Ross 2004;de Soysa 2002). Governments of resourcerich countries where income is unearned simply neglect their citizens and institutions that are needed for providing public goods (Papyrakis and Gerlagh 2004).…”