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Artificial States

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Author Info
William Easterly ()
Alberto Alesina
Janina Matuszeski

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Abstract

Artificial states are those in which political borders do not coincide with a division of nationalities desired by the people on the ground. We propose and compute for all countries in the world two new measures how artificial states are. One is based on measuring how borders split ethnic groups into two separate adjacent countries. The other one measures how straight land borders are, under the assumption the straight land borders are more likely to be artificial. We then show that these two measures seem to be highly correlated with several measures of political and economic success.

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File URL: http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/10648
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Center for Global Development in its series Working Papers with number 100.

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Length: 40 pages
Date of creation: Sep 2006
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:cgd:wpaper:100

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Related research
Keywords: Artificial states; political borders;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
O10 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
F50 - International Economics - - International Relations and International Political Economy - - - General

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. La Porta, Rafael & Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert, 1999. "The Quality of Government," Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(1), pages 222-79, April.
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  2. Alberto Alesina & Enrico Spolaore & Romain Wacziarg, 2000. "Economic Integration and Political Disintegration," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1276-1296, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  3. Alesina, Alberto & Spolaore, Enrico, 1997. "On the Number and Size of Nations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 112(4), pages 1027-56, November.
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  4. Mauro, Paolo, 1995. "Corruption and Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 110(3), pages 681-712, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Edward L. Glaeser & Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer, 2004. "Do Institutions Cause Growth?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 271-303, 09. [Downloadable!]
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  6. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2001. "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1369-1401, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Alesina, Alberto, et al, 2003. " Fractionalization," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 155-94, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Francisco Alcalá & Antonio Ciccone, 2004. "Trade and Productivity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 119(2), pages 612-645, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Desmet, Klaus & Le Breton, Michel & Ortuño-Ortín, Ignacio & Weber, Shlomo, 2006. "Nation Formation and Genetic Diversity," CEPR Discussion Papers 5918, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. Alesina, Alberto F & Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina, 2008. "Segregation and the Quality of Government in a Cross-Section of Countries," CEPR Discussion Papers 6943, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  3. Phillip Garner, 2008. "Congo and Korea: a study in divergence," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(3), pages 326-346. [Downloadable!]
  4. James C. Rockey, 2007. "Which Democracies Pay Higher Wages?," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 07/600, Department of Economics, University of Bristol, UK. [Downloadable!]
  5. Naude, Wim, 2007. "Geography and Development in Africa: Overview and Implications for Regional Cooperation," Working Papers UNU-WIDER Research Paper , World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER). [Downloadable!]
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This page was last updated on 2009-10-19.

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