Artificial States

Alberto Alesina, William Easterly and Janina Matuszeski

No 12328, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

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.

JEL-codes: F43 F50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
Note: POL
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Published as Alberto Alesina & William Easterly & Janina Matuszeski, 2011. "Artificial States," Journal of the European Economic Association, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 9(2), pages 246-277, 04.

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Related works:
Journal Article: ARTIFICIAL STATES (2011)
Working Paper: Artificial States (2006)
Working Paper: Artificial States (2006)
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