The past decade has seen rapid growth in an interdisciplinary body of research examining the legacy of war on social and political behaviour. This column presents a meta-analysis and synthesis of this research. Evidence from surveys and experiments from over 40 countries reveals a stylised fact: individual exposure to war-related violence tends to increase social cooperation, community participation, and pro-social behaviour. However, these changes...
Ethnic divisions have been shown to adversely affect economic performance and political stability, particularly in Africa. However, the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Using experimental data from Kenya, this column studies whether one potential mechanism – co-ethnic bias – affects altruism. Strikingly, most tests yield no evidence of co-ethnic bias, suggesting that other mechanisms must be driving the negative association between ethnic diversity and...
Power Africa is tackling a critical global challenge. All of Sub-Saharan Africa, with 961 million residents, currently only consumes about as much power as New York City. Expanding energy access will be vital for driving Africa’s economic transformation over the coming decades. Yet our research in Kenya shows that most households and businesses still face major barriers to accessing electricity. In recent years, hundreds of...
The last few days have seen an outpouring of news stories relating to “worm wars”, the policy debate over whether governments should provide mass treatment for intestinal worm infections in endemic areas. This was sparked when a re-analysis of a 2004 study (which found a strong link between deworming and school attendance) was published last week in the International Journal of Epidemiology. An issue...
As temperatures rise, tempers flare. Anyone who has experienced the hostility of a swelteringly hot summer day in the city can attest to that. But researchers are now quantifying the causal relationship between extreme climate and human conflict. Whether their focus is on small-scale interpersonal aggression or large-scale political instability, low-income or high-income societies, the year 10,000 B.C. or the present day, the overall conclusion...
This CEGA Blog Forum builds on a seminal research meeting held at the University of California, Berkeley on December 7, 2012. The goal was to bring together a select interdisciplinary group of scholars – from biostatistics, economics, political science and psychology – with a shared interest in promoting transparency in empirical social science research....
It is well known that the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s were a disaster for the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. In a period when other underdeveloped regions, especially Asia, were experiencing steady economic growth, Africa as a whole saw its living standards plummet. Nearly all Africans lived under dictatorships, and millions suffered through brutal civil wars. Then, in the 1990s, the HIV/AIDS epidemic exploded, slashing...
In his essay (and two recent books) Paul Collier lays out a detailed vision for how foreign aid and intervention might promote economic progress in the world’s poorest regions, areas populated by what he has called the “bottom billion.” The key problem, as Collier describes it here, is that: "A group of about 60 small, impoverished, post-colonial countries . . . . are structurally...
Audio available via Marketplace (18:18). Republican majorities in Congress passed the largest expansion of federal government health spending in decades with the Medicare Prescription Drug Act of 2003, with strong support from President Bush. One has to wonder if there are more than economic ideology differences at work on either side. Even Rush Limbaugh said about the stimulus plan: "I don't think it's designed to stimulate...