Eliana La Ferrara (Alesina Seminar)

See the seminar's full schedule here: Alberto Alesina Seminar on Political Economy

Today's Speaker

Eliana La Ferrara (HKS), "Digging Deeper: Mining Companies and Armed Bands in the DRC"

Abstract

We investigate the relationship between armed groups and large-scale mining rms in the Democratic Republic of Congo using geo-referenced data over 2000-2015. We start by showing that the pattern of links between armed bands and concession owners signicantly departs from the random benchmark, even after accounting for geographic proximity. After observing a given owner-band pair in a concession, we are signicantly more likely to nd the same pair in a dierent concession, possibly far away. We next explore the nature of the interaction by focusing on the timing and on the type of violence exerted by armed groups, and by exploring how it varies with local population density. Our results are consistent with the interpretation that mining companies and armed bands engage in repeated interactions, where the latter help clear the territory from competing armed bands and destabilize the surrounding environment in a way that potentially allows to access cheaper labor.

Co-sponsored by FAS and IQSS, the Alberto Alesina Seminar on Political Economy supports research-related activities that integrate the study of economics and politics, whether by studying economic behavior in the political process or political behavior in the marketplace. In general, positive political economy is concerned with showing how observed differences among institutions affect political and economic outcomes in various social, economic, and political systems and how the institutions themselves change and develop in response to individual and collective beliefs, preferences, and strategies.

Zoom links for the Alesina Seminar are distributed via the seminar's mailing list. You can subscribe to the Alesina Seminar Mailing List here.

See the seminar's full schedule at the Alesina Seminar page.

All interested faculty and students are invited to attend.