Regional Resources and Democratic Secessionism

Kai Gehring and Stephan Schneider

No 7336, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Although regional resources have been shown to influence secessionist conflicts in developing countries, their effect in established democracies has largely been neglected. We integrate regional resource value and inter-regional transfers in a model on the optimal size of nations, and show that regional wealth correlates positively with secessionist party success in a large panel of regions. To establish causality, our difference-in-differences and triple-differences designs exploit that Scotland and Wales both feature separatist parties, but only an independent Scotland would profit from oil discoveries off its coast. We document an economically and statistically significant positive effect of regional resources and rule out plausible alternative explanations.

Keywords: fiscal federalism; inter-regional transfers; redistribution; secession; separatism; size; of nations; resources; economic voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D70 H77 N90 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-ene
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Regional resources and democratic secessionism (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7336

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