Tyler Cowen's Blog, page 217
March 6, 2014
The Economic Origins of the Territorial State
That is a recent paper by Scott Abramson of Princeton (headed to Rochester), here is the abstract:
This paper challenges the long standing belief that changes in patterns of war and war-making caused the emergence of large territorial states. Using new data describing the universe of European states between 1100 and 1790 I �find that small political units continued to thrive well into the “age of the territorial state,” an era during which some argue changes in the production of violence led to the dominance of geographically large political units. In contrast, I �find evidence that variation in patterns of economic development and urban growth caused fragmented political authority in some places and the construction of geographically large territorial states in others. Exploiting random climatic variation in the propensity of certain pieces of geography to support large populations, I show via an instrumental variables approach that the emergence of towns and cities caused the formation of small and independent states. Last, I explore how changes in economic forces interacted with patterns of war-making, demonstrating that the e�ffect of urban development was greatest in periods associated with declines in the costs of producing large-scale military force.
Here is Abramson’s forthcoming book on that same topic., summarized here:
Under what conditions do some political units expand and others contract? Why do some fail and others persist? In which periods should we expect universal empires and why in others systems of states? My dissertation answers these questions by explaining variation in the number and size of the basic unit of political life, the state. Using a combination of formal, statistical, and historical methods, this book length project explores the origins of the territorial state between 1100 and 1789. I first develop a game theoretic model of state formation that captures both war-making and economic constraints on state-makers. The theory’s implications are then empirically tested through a series of quasi-experimental research designs and historical case studies. While many macro-historical accounts highlight the consequences of changing patterns of war and war-making for processes of state formation, this book argues that these effects have been overstated. Rather, I show that changes in economic geography caused variation in the number and size of states across both time and space.
His introductory chapter you will find here (pdf). For the pointers I thank Mark Koyama.
Bureaucracies can act swiftly when they wish to
Russia’s takeover of Crimea is already so complete that commercial flights to Kiev from the region’s main airport, located outside Simferopol, the regional capital 50 miles from Sevastopol, now leave from the international terminal instead of the domestic one as they did until last week.
There is more here.
Profile of Satoshi Nakamoto, creator (?) of Bitcoin
Mitchell suspects Nakamoto’s initial interest in creating a digital currency that could be used anywhere in the world may have stemmed from his frustration with bank fees and high exchange rates when he was sending international wires to England to buy model trains. “He would always complain about that,” she says. “I would not say he writes flawless English. He will pick up words and mix the spellings.”
And he worked in secrecy:
Not even his family knew.
The full story is here, fascinating throughout.
Addendum: Andrea Castillo adds comment.
Strange sentences about Mexico and China (and other places too)
Mexican security officials this week launched a major crackdown on the cartel’s business smuggling iron ore to China, which another senior government figure confirmed had become more profitable for the Knights Templar than drug running.
There is an FT article here. The smuggling accounted for 44 percent of the iron ore produced in Mexico. And why smuggle iron ore? The New York Times adds:
Chinese buyers, law enforcement officials have said, have been pressured into buying ore from the gang under threats.
Furthermore many of the mines were not legally registered or the iron ore was stolen. There is more detail here, and here is another exotic sentence:
In a scene that could have been imagined by Gabriel García Márquez, last Christmas three Sinaloa drug cartel members were arrested in a cock fighting farm close to Manila.
The broader question here is whether “drug gangs” could find new outlets for their shenanigans, if drugs were to be legalized or decriminalized. For more on that you can read this older MR post.
By the way, via Craig Richardson, here are photos of a Chinese ghost town in Angola.:
Kilamba is an enormous and largely empty housing development 30 km (18 miles) from Luanda,the capital city of Angola, designed to accommodate 500,000 people, with a dozen schools and other facilities. As of July 2012 only 212 houses had been sold, due to difficulties in obtaining mortgages. The cost is reported as US$3.5 billion, financed by a Chinese credit line and repaid by the Angolan government with oil. The city of Kilamba is a government project that coincides with President Jose Eduardo dos Santos 2008 election pledge to build one million homes in four years. (He just didn’t promise people would live there.)
And what happened to Hong Kong and Tibet?
March 5, 2014
In with the new, out with the old [Il mio papa]
The 68-page Il Mio Papa (My Pope) will hit Italian newsstands on Ash Wednesday, offering a glossy medley of papal pronouncements and photographs, along with peeks into his personal life. Each weekly issue will also include a pullout centerfold of the pope, accompanied by a quote.
“It’s a sort of fanzine, but of course it can’t be like something you’d do for One Direction,” the popular boy band, said the magazine’s editor, Aldo Vitali. “We aim to be more respectful, more noble.”
There is more here. It will sell for fifty cents, but there are intellectual property issues:
“Various magazines publish the pope’s teachings, but they have an accord with us,” said the Rev. Giuseppe Costa, the director of the Libreria Editrice Vaticana. A similar accord has not been signed with My Pope, he added, though the magazine should have known better “because we have a relationship with Mondadori.”
“In the case they publish the pope’s words, I will have to intervene,” Father Costa said.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the ledger:
Former Pope Benedict, in one of the few times he has broken his silence since stepping down nearly a year ago, has branded as “absurd” fresh media speculation that he was forced to quit.
And his world of scarcity continues:
Libero also suggested that Benedict chose to continue to wear white because he still felt like he was a pope.
Benedict, who lives in near-total isolation inside a former convent on the Vatican grounds, was also asked about this and responded:
“I continue to wear a white cassock and kept the name Benedict for purely practical reasons. At the moment of my resignation there were no other cloths available.
Markets in Everything: Prostitution for Beginners
The Guardian: An enterprising association of sex workers in Barcelona has angered some of Spain’s most prominent feminists by offering an “intro to prostitution” course in response to what its members say is a growing number of women turning to sex work in the wake of Spain’s financial crisis.
…Four hours was too little time, she said, to cover a list of topics such as dealing with the stigma of prostitution, sex tricks, filing tax returns and marketing. A second day will be held this month because of high demand. “Nobody else can teach these things,” said Borrell. “Not psychologists, anthropologists or political scientists – only prostitutes.”
In related stories, this piece on the legal, mega-brothels of Germany is well produced.
Can too much cultural similarity cause war?
Akos Lada has a new research paper (pdf) on this question:
Does sharing the same religion, civilization or racial proximity lead to more peaceful relations between countries? This paper argues that cultural similarity can actually cause wars, which occur to combat diffusion. This new theory of war combines the models of Acemoglu and Robinson (2006) and Fearon (1995), and shows that cultural similarity can lead to more warfare when old elites are afraid of losing their position to a newly inspired citizenry, as these elites try to destroy the external source of inspiration. The microfoundation for inspiration is derived from revealed information about the income level under given institutions, which are assumed to have positive correlation with cultural proximity. On the empirical side, I present case studies on the 1848 Revolutions, the 2013 Korean Crisis (using content analysis of official North Korean articles) and on the First World War, as well as statistical analysis on all the wars of the last two centuries.
Here is Lada’s blog post on Ukraine and Russia. Excerpt:
Perhaps because a more democratic Ukrainian government may serve as an example to Russian citizens of how culturally-similar people can be alternatively governed. As history shows, a dictator with an army does not wait for this to happen.
Assorted links
1. Counterfactuals behind a nuclear Ukraine.
2. Can a rubbish-obsessed boy buy a lorry with his mother’s credit card?
3. Are digital musical services leading to a superstar economy?
4. The germ theory of culture (I don’t buy it). And the Indian sanitary pad revolutionary.
5. Restaurants rate the DC food critics.
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