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1971. Incentives and Survival in Violent Conflicts

Author:
Moshik Lavie and Christophe Muller
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Institution:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Abstract:
This paper analytically investigates the incentive scheme of perpetrators of violent conflicts. It provides a rational equilibrium framework to elicit how monetary incentives and survival considerations shape a combatant‟s decision to participate in a conflict. In the model, a leader decides to award soldiers monetary incentives. Civilians finance the militia via donations and soldiers decide on the actual fighting and indulge in looting. We explore the scheduled decision-making that takes place on the path toward a violent conflict and study the principal-agent relationship that exists between the leader and the militia. In addition, we analyze the effect of several internal factors (productivity and survival risk) and external factors (relative economic resources, opponents‟ military strength) on the intensity of the conflict.
Topic:
Economics

1972. Clean Trade in Natural Resources

Author:
Leif Wenar
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
The "resource curse" can strike countries that derive a large portion of their national income from exporting high-value natural resources, such as oil, gas, metals, and gems. Resource-exporting countries are subject to four overlapping curses: they are more prone to authoritarianism, they tend to suffer more corruption, they are at a higher risk for civil wars, and they exhibit greater economic instability. The correlations between resources and such pathologies as authoritarianism, corruption, civil conflict, and economic dysfunction are evident in the list of the five major African oil exporters: Algeria, Angola, Libya, Nigeria, and Sudan. The recent histories of mineral exporters support the correlations: for example, "blood diamonds" fueled Sierra Leone's decade-long civil war, and the continuing conflict in the metal-rich eastern Congo has caused up to 6 million deaths. The phenomenon is not solely African: Burma, Yemen, and Turkmenistan, for example, are also resource cursed. Moreover, poor governance in resource-cursed countries can engender follow-on pathologies, such as a propensity to cause environmental damage both domestically (for example, through the destruction of forests) and globally (through increased greenhouse gas emissions). Most research on the resource curse has focused on the institutions of exporting countries. This essay focuses instead on importing countries, especially those in North America and Europe. I survey how the resource curse impedes core interests of importing states. I then discuss how the policies of importing states drive the resource curse, and how these policies violate their existing international commitments. The second half of the paper describes a policy framework for importing states that can improve international trade in resources for both importers and exporters.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Sudan, Libya, Algeria, Burma, North America, Nigeria, and Angola

1973. Averting Tomorrow's Global Food Crisis: The European Union's role in delivering food justice in a resource-constrained world

Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Why, in a world that produces more than enough food to feed everybody, do so many – one in seven – go hungry? Oxfam's new global campaign, GROW, seeks answers to this question. GROW aims to transform the way we grow, share, and live together. GROW will expose the failing governments and powerful business interests that are propping up a broken food system and sleepwalking the world into an unprecedented and avoidable reversal in human development.
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, Foreign Aid, and Food
Political Geography:
Europe

1974. Exploring Food Price Scenarios Towards 2030 With a Global Multi-Region Model

Author:
Dirk Willenbockel
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
This report is a contribution to the Oxfam report: 'Growing a Better Future'. It explores a range of scenarios for food price increases to 2030 through the GLOBE model. Over and above providing a global perspective, the research provides disaggregated results for a range of countries and country groups identified by Oxfam.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, Economics, Poverty, and Food
Political Geography:
Africa

1975. Combating Rural Poverty and Hunger Through Agroforestry in Bolivia

Author:
Kate Kilpatrick
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
In contrast to intensive agricultural practices that require widespread forest clearing, agroforestry systems combine tree growing with the production of other crops or animals. By promoting tree planting, biodiversity, and long-term resource husbandry, agroforestry can be an economically and environmentally sustainable option for small-scale farmers who are struggling to combat the impacts of climate change. For hungry and food-insecure communities, agroforestry creates more resilient agricultural systems where the risk of crop failure is spread between diverse crops.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, Economics, Environment, and Food
Political Geography:
Latin America and Bolivia

1976. Walking the Talk: Cash transfers and gender dynamics

Author:
Carol Brady
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Concern Worldwide (Concern) and Oxfam GB (Oxfam) jointly commissioned this report to look at the impacts of cash transfers (CTs) on gender dynamics both within households and communities. This report was commissioned because of the agencies' concerns that while CTs, now being used in many different emergency contexts, are expected to benefit women and contribute towards their empowerment, there was little evidence being collected to see whether this was in fact happening. The learning from this report will inform future gender sensitive CT programmes.
Topic:
Security, Economics, Gender Issues, and Food
Political Geography:
Kenya, Indonesia, and Zimbabwe

1977. Kevin E. Davis (ed.), Institutions and Economic Performance (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2010).

Author:
Martino Bianchi
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Central European University Political Science Journal
Institution:
Central European University
Abstract:
The relevance of institutions for the economic analysis is a theoretical core issue within contemporary debate. Mainstream neoclassical economics, in fact, has traditionally considered institutions as a peripheral element: they are constraints, which can interfere with market outcomes, but that nevertheless are mainly irrelevant in understanding the inner mechanisms of markets. On the contrary, within the Institutional Economics, and later the New Institutional Economics (NIE) many scholars has tried to support the idea that institutions are the crucial element which explains economic performances: moulding actors preferences and behaviour, institutions directly affect each element of economics theory. In their analyses NIE scholars draws from various scientific disciplines, like political science, cognitive theories, social psychology and sociology: they make an attempt to abandon the thrifty descriptions produced by mainstream economists, giving a much broader insight in economic dynamics. At the same time, they try to outline an empirical description of market's configuration. In the last two decades NIE has gained considerable relevance and scientific recognition: first Ronald Coase, in 1991, then Douglass C. North in 1993, and finally Oliver E. Williamson and Elinor Ostrom who, in 2009, won the Nobel Prize for Economics. Despite this, NIE is still usually referred as a heterodox scholarship.
Topic:
Economics

1978. Daniel Heller-Roazen, The Enemy of All: Piracy and The Law of Nations (New York: Zone Books, 2009).

Author:
Zoltán Glück
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Central European University Political Science Journal
Institution:
Central European University
Abstract:
Perhaps the most misleading platitude that one hears all too often in discussions of the contemporary rise of piracy off the Horn of Africa is that piracy has been around since the beginning of recorded history. On the surface, the statement is of course true. But this truth comes at the tremendous price of conceptually flattening differences between diverse social and historical situations into a one dimensional legal category, thereby obfuscating the genealogy of a concept and a figure that has been formative to the history of nations. It is precisely this complex genealogy that Professor Heller-Roazen assails and reconstructs with tremendous acumen and subtlety in his latest work The Enemy of All: Piracy and the Law of Nations.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
Germany and North Africa

1979. External versus Domestic Debt in the Euro Crisis

Author:
Daniel Gros
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
As EU leaders muddle through the eurozone crisis, the debate about its root causes continues. CEPS Director Daniel Gros argues in this Policy Brief that the debate is important if we are to understand how to prevent future crises. In his view, external debt is the key to the turmoil in European economies and that the focus on total public debt is therefore misleading.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Europe

1980. The EU's Response to the Financial Crisis: A mid-term review

Author:
Karel Lannoo
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
Two years after the London G-20, CEPS Chief Executive Karel Lannoo finds that the EU is well advanced in delivering on the commitments made for the 2013 target date. Important steps have been taken on the institutional side, and regulatory changes are moving ahead. On some issues, in fact, such as remuneration, the EU has made even greater headway than the US. But certain key sensitive matters remain, such as bank resolution or structural changes.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, Global Recession, Monetary Policy, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and London