Can the Economics of Shared Societies Support More Resilient Economies and Global Sustainability? Challenges and opportunities in an interdependent world

This paper first highlights the empirical relationship between negative peace and key indicators of the shared societies agenda, such as measures of social cohesion, civic activism, human rights and in equality of opportunity in economic, social and political spheres. This shows how negative peace or the absence of violence is both the product and producer of the formal and informal institutions that are associated with the shared societies agenda. The body of the working paper is an attempt to categorize and account for the size of economic activity devoted to either inflicting, preventing, and dealing with the consequences of violence in the United States. This defined category of economic activity is referred to as the violence containment industry (VCI) or violence containment spending. It is defined as ‘public or private sector economic activity that either inflicts or prevents, responds to, and deals with the consequences of violence’. The costs of violence containment spending is broken down into both the public and private sectors, and shown in terms of net value added. The research shows in 2010 alone, the violence containment industry accounted for USD2.16 trillion or around 15% of U.S. gross domestic product. This shows if violence containment spending was represented as a discrete national economic entity, it would, excluding the U.S. itself, be the sixth largest economy in the world. In individual terms, it represents an equivalent dollar value of over USD7000 for every man, women, and child each year or just over USD15000 for each taxpayer. This shows the interdependent relationship between peace, shared societies, and economic productivity.