Economic sanctions and official ethnic discrimination in target countries, 1950–2003

Conventional studies on the consequences of sanctions tend to focus on the target society as a whole without specifying how foreign economic pressures might affect the well-being of vulnerable groups within target countries – the same groups who often disproportionately bear the burden of sanctions. This study explores the extent to which sanctions increase the likelihood of discriminatory government practices against one of the globally most vulnerable groups, ethnic groups. It is argued that sanctions contribute to the rise of official ethnic-based economic and political discrimination through contracting the economy and creating incentives for the target government to employ ethnic-based discriminatory policies. Using data on over 900 ethnic groups from 1950 to 2003, the results lend support for the theoretical claim that sanctions prompt the government to pursue ethnic-based discriminatory economic and political practices in multiethnic countries. The findings also indicate that multilateral sanctions are likely to be more harmful to the well-being of ethnic groups than sanctions levied by individual countries. Further, the negative effect of comprehensive sanctions appears to be greater than that of sanctions with moderate and limited impact on the target economy. The regime type of the target state, on the other hand, appears to have a significant role only in conditioning the hypothesized effect of sanctions on economic discrimination. Overall, this study’s focus on a vulnerable segment of the target society – ethnic groups – offers a greater understanding of the consequences of sanctions. It also provides additional insight as to how, in multiethnic countries, political elites might domestically respond to external pressures to retain power.     

Growth recovery after civil conflict: a fractional integration approach

Using recent econometric techniques based on fractional integration, we find that developing countries recover their economic growth faster than developed countries in response to a shock. Following this methodology, we find that longer civil conflicts are associated with a faster recovery process. We further investigate this issue by exploring correlations with components of GDP, military spending, institutions and aid and find heterogeneous effects of these channels by duration of conflict. Higher government spending is correlated with faster recoveries post longer conflicts, and higher consumption spending is linked to faster recoveries following shorter conflicts. Military spending appears to be driving the government expenditure that makes countries recover from longer conflicts. More democratic institutions are associated with faster recoveries post short wars but slower recoveries following long wars.     

Educate or Adjudicate? Socioeconomic Heterogeneity and Welfare

I present a formal framework to explore the welfare and distributional effects of a government’s optimal choice over two types of public spending in a closed economy: domestic security (DS) and investment in social capital (SC). Production is characterized as a function of social and physical capital stocks that both vary across the regions. DS stands for total factor productivity, while SC stands for human capital and civic cooperativeness combined. SC accumulates via public spending on universal primary education, cultural, and civic events and such, and is exposed to regional spillover effects. Numerical simulations of the static solution of the government’s welfare maximization problem reveal that the optimal rate of spending on SC (m^*) is negatively related with the income share of physical capital, SC spillovers and fiscal decentralization. Simulations also show that SC homogeneity is positively associated with both the level and equitability of aggregate income. The maximum attainable levels of income, welfare and social cohesion and the most equitable incomes are all observed to realize at some intermediate range of m^* values. In case DS augments SC, however, social cohesion improves and welfare declines monotonously in m^*.     

Military Expenditure,Economic Growth and Heterogeneity

This paper examines the impact of military expenditure on economic growth on a large balanced panel, using an exogenous growth model and dynamic panel data methods for 106 countries over the period 1988–2010. A major focus of the paper is to consider the possibility group heterogeneity and non-linearity. Having estimated the model for all of the countries in the panel and finding that military burden has a negative effect on growth in the short and long run, the panel is broken down into various groupings based upon a range of potentially relevant factors, and the robustness of the results is evaluated. The factors considered are different levels of income, conflict experience, natural resources abundance, openness and aid. The estimates for the different groups are remarkably consistent with those for the whole panel, providing strong support for the argument that military spending has adverse effects on growth. There are, however, some intriguing results that suggest that for certain types of countries military spending has no significant effect on growth.     

Resource rents,institutions, and violent civil conflicts

Natural resources have been blamed for inducing slow growth and sparking civil conflicts and violence. This paper first develops a model to account for the hazard of armed civil conflicts as a manifestation of the natural resource curse, which is mediated by the quality of both economic and political institutions. We then use recently published data on institutional quality and natural resource rents to measure the potential impact of the resource curse on violent civil conflicts using a panel of data for over 100 countries in the period 1970–2010. Our model explicitly accounts for the role of good economic and political institutions in deterring the recourse to violence as well as the extent to which they might weaken the resource rents effect.     

卫星导航系统的体系安全性分析方法

为了应对卫星导航系统内部复杂关系等体系特征为其安全分析带来的挑战、全面识别和分析卫星导航系统面临的体系安全威胁、提高系统的安全性和服务能力,基于功能依赖网络分析理论提出了从体系角度研究卫星导航系统安全性的建模方法,重点对导航系统内组件系统之间交互关系导致的危险传播、任意失效组合进行了后果分析和原因调查。仿真结果表明该方法能清晰地描述危险传播和失效组合的过程以及进行正逆向的推理分析,也证明了该方法在卫星导航系统安全分析问题上的潜力和适用性。     

窄带假设对GNSS天线阵抗干扰性能评估的影响分析

传统方法基于窄带假设条件下的模型对天线阵抗干扰性能进行评估,存在分析精度低的问题.新一代全球卫星导航信号带宽的增加使得宽带效应更为明显,影响将更为严重.因此,窄带假设所造成的影响需要重新审视.论文结合当前普遍采用的数字域加权处理方式,推导出天线阵处理频率响应的精确模型,得出阵列处理响应在频域上可表示为空域导向矢量与时间...     

ECONOMIC GROWTH AND VIOLENT INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT: 1875–1999

This paper extends the joint product model of military alliances to apply to the new strategic doctrine adopted by NATO in the 1990s. In particular, a choice must be made between protecting one's own territory and pooling forces for an alliancewide rapid reaction force. This new model accounts for a host of externalities and their implications for burden sharing, full financing, and allocative efficiency. The Pigouvian taxes that adjust for force thinning and attack deflection are shown to finance optimal border‐protecting forces under a variety of circumstances. Second‐best considerations arise owing to the pure publicness of rapid reaction forces. The ideal toll arrangement does not currently characterize NATO financing, nor is it likely to do so.     

Defence spending and growth in turkey 1954–1993: A causal analysis

This paper investigates the causality issue between military expenditure and growth in the case of Turkey, a strategically located developing country, for the period 1954–1993. Results reported herein reveal the absence of any causal ordering between the variables in question.     

Country survey X: Defence spending in Turkey

This paper provides a country survey of the Turkish defence economy. Turkey is a member of NATO alliance and is strategically located between Europe and Middle East. Moreover, Turkey has a high defence burden and high economic growth. The first part of the survey presents a brief economic background of Turkey, its armed forces, the defence industry, its modernisation and trends in Turkish defence expenditure. The rest of the paper focuses on the relationships between defence spending and economic growth. The effect of defence spending on economic growth is econometrically estimated using a supply side model. Both externality effects and the size effect of defence spending are estimated for Turkey. The study concludes that defence expenditure stimulates economic growth while externalities from the defence sector to the rest of economy are negative for Turkey.