Working Paper: NBER ID: w12328
Authors: 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 how artificial states are. One is based on measuring how borders split ethnic groups into two separate adjacent countries. The other one 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.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: F43; F50
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Artificial states (F55) | Lower GDP per capita (F69) |
| Artificial states (F55) | Poorer institutional quality (O17) |
| Fractal measure of border straightness (F12) | Lower GDP per capita (F69) |
| Artificial states (F55) | Political instability (O17) |
| Artificial states (F55) | Violence (D74) |