Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Bandits or states? Evidence on the origins of states from armed groups in eastern Congo

一些国家保护其人民，在税收方面采取限制措施并提供公共产品，而另一些国家则从事任意征用并阻碍经济增长。为什么?这个问题最近在经济学中得到了大量的关注，但现有的理论仍然是探索性的，没有经过因果推理方法的检验。由于国家应该垄断使用暴力，社会科学经常描述由犯罪组织集中暴力形成的强大国家。这是建立强大国家的第一步，本研究将使用刚果民主共和国东部的武装组织进行测试。现有的解释强调，未来潜在税收的高预期价值可以诱导犯罪组织放弃任意征收。来自人口的更高水平的预期应税收入确实可以激励“土匪”定居并促进增长，以征税为目的，特别是当他们经营的环境以弱国为特征时。反之，则会降低土地控制的回报，并导致土匪进行任意的暴力征用，从而阻碍投资或损害产生产出的税基潜力。为了首次用因果推理方法为这一问题提供经验证据，本项目收集了刚果民主共和国（DRC）东部120个村庄的数十个武装团体的原始历史数据（1990-2013年），武装团体在那里运作和曾经运作过。有传闻和初步证据表明，这些团体参与了暴力征用，但他们往往更喜欢定居，建立地方机构，提供公共产品，并在重复的基础上对产出征税。关于该地区过去的丰富信息经常被忽视，但本研究表明，有可能收集这些信息并产生刚果民主共和国一个地区和一个时期的高质量分类数据。在此期间，刚果民主共和国矿物的世界价格发生了异常巨大的变化。本研究利用了这些变化，以及村一级意外发现矿物和耗尽矿物的日期，以便对当地条件（村里应税产出的价值和类型，通常是矿物）如何推动经济体制提供因果解释，而经济体制被认为对私营部门的增长至关重要。在这方面，目标是了解当地条件和世界市场力量的变化如何使武装团体在当地建立类似国家的机构，并避免对受影响村庄的平民使用暴力。该项目的目的是产生数据，作为长期研究议程的基础，并使分析下列问题成为可能：社区防卫团体的形成机制；性暴力的程度和社会影响；以及一个嵌入式真实情境实验，评估冲突群体之间的种族间信任和信任诱导机构的作用。结果数据集已被证明具有非常高的质量。它包括当地价格；武装团体和地方当局的税收种类和水平；暴力征收;提供公共产品；武装团体参与村庄管理的程度；本地招聘策略；以及家庭经济和社会历史。

Some states protect their populations, use restraint in taxation and provide public goods, while others engage in arbitrary expropriation and impede economic growth. Why? This question has recently received substantial attention in economics, but the existing theory remains exploratory and untested with causal inference methods. Since states are supposed to have the monopoly of the use of violence, social sciences have often described strong states forming out of criminal organizations centralizing violence. It is this first step into the formation of strong states that this study will test using armed groups in eastern Democratic of Congo.Existing explanations emphasize that high expected value of future potential taxation can induce criminal organizations to abandon arbitrary expropriation. Larger levels of expected taxable income from the population indeed can generate incentives to "bandits" to settle and promote growth for the purpose of taxing it, especially when the environment in which they operate is characterized by a weak state. The opposite can in turn reduce the returns of territorial control, and lead bandits to engage in arbitrary violent expropriations that discourage investment or hurt the tax base potential for output generation. In order to provide for the first time empirical evidence on this question with causal inference methods, this project implements the collection of original historical data (1990-2013) on dozens of armed groups in 120 villages in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where armed groups operate and have operated. There is anecdotal and preliminary evidence that these groups engage in violent expropriations, but they often prefer to settle, build local institutions, provide public goods, and tax output on a repeated basis. The wealth of information accessible about the past of this region if often disregarded, but this study demonstrates that it is possible to collect it and produce high quality disaggregated data in DRC of an area and a period that has none.Through that period, unusually large changes in world prices for minerals located in DRC have been well documented. This study exploits these changes, as well as village level dates of surprise mineral discovery and exhaustion, in order to provide a causal explanation of how local conditions - the value and type of the taxable output in the village, often minerals - drive economic institutions, which are believed to be essential for private sector growth. In this context, the objective is understanding how local conditions and changes in world market forces cause armed groups to set up local state-like institutions, and to refrain from violence against civilians in the affected villages.The project has been designed to generate data that will be the basis of a long term research agenda, and allow for the analysis of the following questions: the mechanisms of formation of community defense groups; the extent and social effects of sexual violence; as well as an embedded real context experiment assessing inter-ethnic trust among conflicted groups and the role of trust-inducing institutions.The resulting dataset has been demonstrated to be of very high quality. It includes local prices; taxation types and levels by armed groups and local authorities; violent expropriations; provision of public goods; degree of participation of armed groups in village administration; local recruitment strategies; and household economic and social histories.