Ethnic conflict, power dynamics and growth

Pecher, Pierre
(2014) , 31 pages

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  • Pecher, PierreUCLouvain
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Abstract
I construct a successive generations model of appropriative competition between ethnicities where de facto power puts an upper-bound on the consumption of each clan. My aim is to derive the implications of the structure of the ethnic and political divisions in terms of economic prosperity. I expose a mechanism reducing negative externalities in consumption implying that long-run economic growth is larger when influence is concentrated rather than dispersed. I find that competition intensity sometimes is beneficial if it is above a thresh-old or if small groups initially have a large influence. I provide an argument in favour of the Ethno-Linguistic Fractionalization index over a polarization index when considering the impact of diversity on growth. This paper fills a gap in the literature by allowing for the possibility of more than two groups of different sizes in a dynamical setup and by being consistent with the evidence of proportionality between ethnic and political share sin sub-Saharan Africa.
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Pecher, P. (2014). Ethnic conflict, power dynamics and growth (IRES Discussion Papers 2014008). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/200180