Artificial States
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.Download Info
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Paper provided by Harvard - Institute of Economic Research in its series Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers with number 2115.Length:
Date of creation: 2006
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:fth:harver:2115
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Keywords:Other versions of this item:
- Alberto Alesina & William Easterly & Janina Matuszeski, 2011. "Artificial States," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 246-277, 04.
- Alberto Alesina & William Easterly & Janina Matuszeski, 2006. "Artificial States," NBER Working Papers 12328, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- William Easterly & Alberto Alesina & Janina Matuszeski, 2006. "Artificial States," Working Papers 100, Center for Global Development.
- O10 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
- F50 - International Economics - - International Relations and International Political Economy - - - General
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Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
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