The Dynamic Interactions of Hate, Violence and Economic Well-Being

Elie Appelbaum

Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, 2025, vol. 31, issue 1, 21-56

Abstract: This paper provides a simple dynamic model that explores the interdependence and dynamic properties of hate, violence and economic well-being. It shows that a time-dependent economic growth process that affects the evolution of hate can yield a long-run steady state, but this steady state will not be free of hate and violence. Moreover, we show that better (long-run) economic conditions do not necessarily result in lower equilibrium levels of hate and violence. We also show that, under reasonable conditions, cycles of hate and violence cannot occur. Consequently, the dynamic properties of hate and violence alone cannot result in cyclical (net) economic well-being patterns. While stable and unstable equilibria are possible, the most likely equilibrium is a saddle point. Given its nature, we can view the paper as an example of a formal model for the ideas of the “dynamical system” literature in psychology. Although the paper does not discuss policy decisions, it identifies potential instruments for policymakers to achieve better steady states and greater stability. Finally, we provide two fully nonlinear multi-dimensional numerical examples (in an appendix) to demonstrate the implications of various psychological attributes, sensitivity to economic conditions, externalities, violence and small equilibria perturbations regarding the nature of the steady state and stability of the equilibria.

Keywords: hate; violence; dynamics; steady state; stability; genuine peace (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C D74 H56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/peps-2024-0035 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
Working Paper: The dynamic interactions of hate, violence and economic well-being (2022)
Working Paper: The dynamic interactions of hate, violence and economic well-being (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:pepspp:v:31:y:2025:i:1:p:21-56:n:1003

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/peps/html

DOI: 10.1515/peps-2024-0035

Access Statistics for this article

Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy is currently edited by Raul Caruso

More articles in Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().