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Artificial States

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  • Alberto Alesina
  • William Easterly
  • Janina Matuszeski

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 of the degree to which states are artificial. One is based on measuring how borders split ethnic groups into two separate adjacent countries. The other 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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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Harvard - Institute of Economic Research in its series Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers with number 2115.

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Date of creation: 2006
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Handle: RePEc:fth:harver:2115

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References

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  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.
  2. Alesina, Alberto & Devleeschauwer, Arnaud & Wacziarg, Romain & Kurlat, Sergio & Easterly, William, 2003. "Fractionalization," Scholarly Articles 4553003, Harvard University Department of Economics.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Francisco Alcalá & Antonio Ciccone, 2001. "Trade and productivity," Economics Working Papers 580, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Jul 2002.
  6. Enrico Spolaore & Alberto Alesina & Romain Wacziarg, 2000. "Economic Integration and Political Disintegration," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1276-1296, December.
  7. Mauro, Paolo, 1995. "Corruption and Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 110(3), pages 681-712, August.
  8. Alberto Alesina & Enrico Spolaore, 1995. "On the Number and Size of Nations," NBER Working Papers 5050, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Alberto Alesina & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2008. "Segregation and the Quality of Government in a Cross-Section of Countries," Working Papers w0120, Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR).
  2. DESMET, Klaus & LE BRETON, Michel & ORTUNO-ORTIN, Ignacio & WEBER, Shlomo, 2006. "Nation formation and genetic diversity," CORE Discussion Papers 2006095, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
  3. Christopher Blattman & Edward Miguel, 2009. "Civil War: A Review of Fifty Years of Research," Working Papers id:2231, eSocialSciences.
  4. Blattman, Christopher & Miguel, Edward, 2009. "Civil War," Center for International and Development Economics Research, Working Paper Series qt90n356hs, Center for International and Development Economics Research, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
  5. James Rockey & Miltiadis Makris, 2010. "Which Democracies Pay Higher Wages?," Discussion Papers in Economics 11/09, Department of Economics, University of Leicester.
  6. Hansson, Gustav & Olsson, Ola, 2006. "Country Size and the Rule of Law: Resuscitating Montesquieu," Working Papers in Economics 200, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
  7. Phillip Garner, 2008. "Congo and Korea: a study in divergence," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(3), pages 326-346.
  8. Klaus Desmet & Michel Le Breton & Ignacio Ortuno-Ortin & Shlomo Weber , 2008. "Stability of Nations and Genetic Diversity ," Working Papers 003-08, International School of Economics at TSU, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia.

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