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，限制税收并提供公共产品，而另一些国家则从事任意征用并阻碍经济增长。为什么？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，没有用因果推理方法进行检验。由于国家被认为拥有使用暴力的垄断权，社会科学经常描述由集中暴力的犯罪组织形成的强大国家。这是形成强大国家的第一步，本研究将测试使用刚果民主共和国东部的武装团体。现有的解释强调，未来潜在税收的高预期值可以诱使犯罪组织放弃任意征用。民众预期应纳税收入水平的提高确实会刺激“土匪”定居并促进增长，以便对其征税，特别是当他们活动的环境以国家虚弱为特点时。相反的情况反过来会减少领土控制的回报，导致土匪进行任意暴力征用，从而阻碍投资或损害税收基础产生产出的潜力。 为了通过因果推理方法首次提供关于这一问题的经验证据，该项目收集了刚果东部120个村庄的数十个武装团体的原始历史数据（1990-2013年），这些村庄是武装团体活动和曾经活动的地方。有传闻和初步证据表明，这些团体参与暴力征用，但他们往往更喜欢定居，建立地方机构，提供公共产品，并重复征税。关于这个地区过去的丰富信息经常被忽视，但这项研究表明，在刚果民主共和国收集这些信息并产生高质量的分类数据是可能的，在一个地区和一个时期没有。通过这一时期，刚果民主共和国矿产品的世界价格发生了异常大的变化。本研究利用这些变化，以及村一级的惊喜矿产发现和枯竭的日期，以提供一个因果关系的解释如何当地条件-价值和类型的应税产出在村里，往往是矿产-驱动经济机构，这被认为是必不可少的私营部门的增长。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导致武装团体建立类似国家的地方机构，并避免对受影响村庄的平民采取暴力行为，该项目旨在产生数据，作为长期研究议程的基础，并分析以下问题：社区防御团体的形成机制;性暴力的程度和社会影响;以及嵌入式真实的背景实验，评估冲突群体之间的种族间信任和信任诱导机构的作用。包括当地价格;武装团体和地方当局的征税类型和水平;暴力征用;公共物品的提供;武装团体参与村庄行政管理的程度;当地招募战略;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.