Development: Conflict and Institutions for GSE M.Sc. students (April 2012)

Session 1: Motivation and Empirical Tools

This session will motivate the focus on political economy and political conflict for studying development. We will also discuss the empirical methods. These methods will thereafter be assumed as understood.

Additional Sources:

EC307 Guide

Data for Homework

Part 1 (session 2-5): Institutions and Political Conflict
The first part of the course focuses on how institutions deal with conflicts of interest (between citizens and between officials and citizens). We will also study how these conflicts can carry into the institutions and corrupt them.

Session 2: Political Accountability

Maskin and Tirole (2004) The Politician and the Judge: Accountability in Government. American Economic Review 94(4), pages 1034-1054

Besley, Persson and Sturm (2010) Political Competition, Policy and Growth: Theory and Evidence from the United States. Review of Economic Studies, 77, pp. 1329--1352.

Session 3: The Politicisation of Government


Mueller, Hannes (2009) Patronage or Meritocracy: See www.politik-salon.de section (research).

Iyer, Lakshmi and Anandi Mani (2010) Traveling Agents: Political Change and Bureaucratic Turnover in India. Review of Economics and Statistics.

Hanssen, Andrew (2004) Is There a Politically Optimal Level of Judicial Independence? American Economic Review, 94(3), pp. 712-729.

Session 4: The Media as a Watchdog?

Snyder, James and David Strömberg (2010) Press Coverage and Political Accountability. Journal of Political Economy, 118(2), pp. 355-408.

Besley, Timothy, and Robin Burgess (2002) The Political Economy of Government Responsiveness: Theory and Evidence from India. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117, pp. 1415-52.

DellaVigna, Stefano and Ethan Kaplan (2007) The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 122, pp. 1187-1234.

Session 5: The Corruptive Force of Economic Power

Baland, Jean-Marie and James A. Robinson (2008) Land and Power: Theory and Evidence from Chile. American Economic Review, 98(5), pp. 1737-65.

Kuziemko, Ilyana and Eric Werker (2006) How Much Is a Seat on the Security Council Worth? Foreign Aid and Bribery at the United Nations. Journal of Political Economy, 114(5), pp. 905-930.

Part 2 (sessions 6-10): Violent Conflict and Institutions
Shifts in coercive power threaten the institutional balance. In part 2 illustrates this endogeneity. In the most extreme cases states fail and violence breaks out on a large scale. Part 3 discusses the causes and economic consequences.

Session 6: Violence and the State

North, Wallis and Weingast (2009) Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. Introduction.

Besley, Tim and Torsten Persson (2010) State Capacity, Conflict, and Development. Econometrica, 78(1), pp. 1-34.

Session 7: On the Fringes of Statehood

Dube; Kaplan and Naidu (2011) Coups, Corporations, and Classified Information. Quarterly Journal of Economics. 126(3), pages 1375-1409.

Acemoglu, Daron; James A. Robinson and Rafael J. Santos Villagran (2010) The Monopoly of Violence: Evidence from Colombia. Mimeo.

Session 8: Organized Crime

Besley, Tim; Thiemo Fetzner and Hannes Mueller (work in progress) The Effect of Somali Piracy on Maritime Trade

Dell, Melissa (2011) Trafficking Networks and the Mexican Drug War. Mimeo.

Sessions 9 and 10: The Causes

and Consequences of Civil War

Blattman, C. and E. Miguel (2010) Civil War. Journal of Economic Literature, 48(1), pp. 3-57.

Esteban, Joan and Debraj Ray (2008) On the Salience of Ethnic Conflict. American Economic Review, 98(5), pp. 2185–2202.

Montalvo, José and Marta Reynal-Querol (2005) Ethnic Polarization, Potential Conflict, and Civil Wars. American Economic Review, 95(3), pp. 796-816.

Besley, Tim and Hannes Mueller (2012) Estimating the Peace Dividend: The Impact of Violence on House Prices in Northern Ireland. American Economic Review.

Comment on Cerra and Saxena.