IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/pubeco/v181y2020ics0047272719301343.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Regional resources and democratic secessionism

Author

Listed:
  • Gehring, Kai
  • Schneider, Stephan A.

Abstract

Although resources have been shown to influence secessionist conflicts in developing countries, their effect in established democracies has largely been neglected. We integrate regional resources and inter-regional transfers in a model of democratic secession, and show that relative regional income correlates positively with secessionist party success in a large panel of regions. To establish causality, our difference-in-differences and triple-differences designs exploit that Scotland and Wales both feature separatist parties, but only an independent Scotland would profit from oil discoveries off its coast. We document an economically and statistically significant positive effect of regional resources and rule out plausible alternative explanations.

Suggested Citation

  • Gehring, Kai & Schneider, Stephan A., 2020. "Regional resources and democratic secessionism," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:181:y:2020:i:c:s0047272719301343
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2019.104073
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272719301343
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2019.104073?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joseph G. Altonji & Todd E. Elder & Christopher R. Taber, 2005. "Selection on Observed and Unobserved Variables: Assessing the Effectiveness of Catholic Schools," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(1), pages 151-184, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gehring, Kai & Kauffeldt, T. Florian & Vadlamannati, Krishna Chaitanya, 2019. "Crime, incentives and political effort: Evidence from India," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 1-20.
    2. Lacroix, Jean & Mitchener, Kris James & Oosterlinck, Kim, 2023. "Domino Secessions: Evidence from the U.S," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 676, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    3. Vanschoonbeek, Jakob, 2020. "Divided We Stad: a Fiscal Bargaining Model for Divided Countries," MPRA Paper 101863, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Kai Gehring, 2020. "Overcoming History through Exit or Integration - Deep-Rooted Sources of Support for the European Union," CESifo Working Paper Series 8129, CESifo.
    5. Nicolas Berman & Mathieu Couttenier & Victoire Girard, 2023. "Mineral Resources and the Salience of Ethnic Identities," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 133(653), pages 1705-1737.
    6. Laia Balcells & Alexander Kuo, 2023. "Secessionist conflict and affective polarization: Evidence from Catalonia," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 60(4), pages 604-618, July.
    7. Agneman, Gustav, 2022. "How economic expectations shape preferences for national independence: Evidence from Greenland," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    8. Christan Bjørnskov & Miguel Ángel Borrella‐Mas & Martin Rode, 2022. "The economics of change and stability in social trust: Evidence from (and for) Catalan secession," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(2), pages 275-297, July.
    9. Daniel Aparicio-Pérez & Maria Teresa Balaguer-Coll & Emili Tortosa-Ausina, 2021. "Politics against Economics: The Case of Spanish Regional Financing," Working Papers 2021/15, Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón (Spain).
    10. Joan Esteban & Sabine Flamand & Massimo Morelli & Dominic Rohner, 2018. "A Dynamic Theory of Secession," HiCN Working Papers 276, Households in Conflict Network.
    11. Friedrich Heinemann, 2021. "The political economy of euro area sovereign debt restructuring," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 32(4), pages 502-522, December.
    12. Massimo Morelli & Dominic Rohner, 2023. "Natural resources and conflict: The crucial role of power mismatch and geographic asymmetries," Working Papers 698, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    13. Victoire Girard & Nicolas Berman & Mathieu Couttenier, 2020. "Natural resources and the salience of ethnic identities," NOVAFRICA Working Paper Series wp2007, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics, NOVAFRICA.
    14. Gehring, Kai & Langlotz, Sarah & Kienberger, Stefan, 2018. "Stimulant or depressant? Resource-related income shocks and conflict," Working Papers 0652, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    15. Kai Gehring & Sarah Langlotz & Stefan Kienberger, 2019. "Stimulant or Depressant? Resource-Related Income Shocks and Conflict," CESifo Working Paper Series 7887, CESifo.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Guido de Blasio & Daniela Vuri, 2019. "Effects of the Joint Custody Law in Italy," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(3), pages 479-514, September.
    2. Mark Carlson & Kris James Mitchener, 2009. "Branch Banking as a Device for Discipline: Competition and Bank Survivorship during the Great Depression," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(2), pages 165-210, April.
    3. Pritchett, Lant, 2023. "Rely (only) on the rigorous evidence” is bad advice," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119818, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Mikel Bedayo & Gabriel Jiménez & José-Luis Peydró & Raquel Vegas, 2020. "Screening and Loan Origination Time: Lending Standards, Loan Defaults and Bank Failures," Working Papers 1215, Barcelona School of Economics.
    5. Deborah A. Cobb-Clark & Chris Ryan & Ana Sartbayeva, 2009. "Taking Chances: The Effect of Growing Up on Welfare on the Risky Behaviour of Young People," CEPR Discussion Papers 604, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    6. Turner, Alex J. & Fichera, Eleonora & Sutton, Matt, 2021. "The effects of in-utero exposure to influenza on mental health and mortality risk throughout the life-course," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).
    7. Dmitri Kirpichev & Enrique Moral-Benito, 2018. "The costs of trade protectionism: evidence from Spanish firms and non-tariff measures," Working Papers 1814, Banco de España.
    8. Roxana Elena Manea, 2021. "School Feeding Programmes, Education and Food Security in Rural Malawi," CIES Research Paper series 63-2020, Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute.
    9. Awaworyi Churchill, Sefa & Smyth, Russell & Trinh, Trong-Anh, 2022. "Energy poverty, temperature and climate change," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    10. Anne Ardila Brenøe & Ulf Zölitz, 2020. "Exposure to More Female Peers Widens the Gender Gap in STEM Participation," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(4), pages 1009-1054.
    11. M. Shahe Emran & Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Yajing Jiang & Yan Sun, 2023. "Occupational dualism and intergenerational educational mobility in the rural economy: evidence from China and India," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 21(3), pages 743-773, September.
    12. Matthew Gentzkow, 2007. "Valuing New Goods in a Model with Complementarity: Online Newspapers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 713-744, June.
    13. Fu, Tong & Jian, Ze, 2020. "A developmental state: How to allocate electricity efficiently in a developing country," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    14. Emil Verner & Győző Gyöngyösi, 2020. "Household Debt Revaluation and the Real Economy: Evidence from a Foreign Currency Debt Crisis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(9), pages 2667-2702, September.
    15. Upasak Das & Rupayan Pal & Udayan Rathore & Bibhas Saha, 2023. "Rein in pandemic by pricing vaccine: Does social trust matter?," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2023-008, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    16. Wissmann, Daniel, 2020. "Finally a Smoking Gun," Discussion Papers in Economics 73026, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    17. Todd Pugatch, 2014. "Safety valve or sinkhole? Vocational schooling in South Africa," IZA Journal of Labor & Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 3(1), pages 1-31, December.
    18. Maja Adena & Julian Harke, 2022. "COVID-19 and pro-sociality: How do donors respond to local pandemic severity, increased salience, and media coverage?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(3), pages 824-844, June.
    19. Bhalotra, Sonia & Clarke, Damian & Mühlrad, Hanna & Palme, Mårten, 2021. "Health and Labor Market Impacts of Twin Birth : Evidence from a Swedish IVF Policy Mandate," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1391, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    20. Thomas Barnay & Éric Defebvre, 2019. "Gender Differences in the Influence of Mental Health on Job Retention," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 33(4), pages 507-532, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fiscal federalism; Inter-regional transfers; Redistribution; Secession; Separatism; Resources; Economic voting;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism
    • N9 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:181:y:2020:i:c:s0047272719301343. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505578 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.