IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ulb/ulbeco/2013-187946.html

Extortion with Protection: Understanding the Effect of Rebel Taxation on Civilian Welfare in Burundi

Author

Listed:
  • Rachel Sabates-Wheeler
  • Philip Verwimp

Abstract

Using a panel data set from Burundi where information on protection payments during the twelve-year civil war was collected, we test the relationship between payments, the nature of extraction by the rebels, and the welfare outcomes. We ask, “Does payment to rebels insure against future welfare loss and does the nature of payment matter? Specifically, does the level of institutionalization of extraction within the rebel governance structure provide a form of insurance for future welfare?” No less than 30 percent of the interviewees made at least one payment. Rebels extract these taxes through one of the following two routes: an “institutionalized” and regular cash-with-receipt method or an ad hoc and unpredictable labor extraction. Using matching methods, we find that payment through the institutionalized route increases household welfare between 16 and 25 percent. Ad hoc extraction has no effect. We situate our findings in the empirical literatures on contributions to mafia-type organizations and rebel governance.

Suggested Citation

  • Rachel Sabates-Wheeler & Philip Verwimp, 2014. "Extortion with Protection: Understanding the Effect of Rebel Taxation on Civilian Welfare in Burundi," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/187946, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    • Handle: RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/187946
    Note: SCOPUS: ar.j
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Neu, Dean, 2023. "Fragile assets: Street gangs and the extortion business," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    2. Travers B Child, 2023. "Losing Hearts & Minds: Aid and Ideology," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 67(2-3), pages 457-493, February.
    3. Shalaka Thakur, 2025. "Armed group taxation and the processes of political ordering in northeast India," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2025-107, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Travers Barclay Child, 2020. "Losing Hearts & Minds: Aid and Ideology," HiCN Working Papers 328, Households in Conflict Network.
    5. Lionel Jeusette & Philip Verwimp, 2017. "Childhood aspirations, occupational outcomes and exposure to violence: Evidence from Burundi," HiCN Working Papers 247, Households in Conflict Network.
    6. Neu, Dean, 2019. "Accounting for extortion," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 50-63.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:ulb:ulbeco:2013/187946. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Benoit Pauwels (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecsulbe.html .

    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.