Artificial States

Alberto Alesina, William Easterly and Janina Matuszeski

No 2115, Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers from Harvard - Institute of Economic Research

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 of the degree to which states are artificial. One is based on measuring how borders split ethnic groups into two separate adjacent countries. The other 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.

Date: 2006
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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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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fth:harver:2115

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