The political economy of plunder: economic opportunity and modern piracy

Ryan S. Jablonski and Steven Oliver

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Maritime piracy is a growing scourge on the international community—imposing large costs on maritime states and the shipping industry, as well as potentially undermining state capacity and funding terrorism. Using original data on over 3,000 pirate attacks, the authors argue that these attacks are, in part, a response to poor labor market opportunities. To establish this, the authors take advantage of the strong effect of commodity prices on labor market opportunities in piracy-prone states. Consistent with this theory, the authors show that changes in the price of labor- and capital-intensive commodities have consistent and strong effects on the number of pirate attacks in a country’s territorial waters each month. The authors confirm these results by instrumenting for commodity prices using monthly precipitation levels.

Keywords: piracy; Somalia; plunder; commodities; oil; political economy; unemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published in Journal of Conflict Resolution, August, 2013, 57(4), pp. 682-708. ISSN: 1552-8766

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/50451/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:ehl:lserod:50451

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().