Papers by Marcus Marktanner
SSRN Electronic Journal
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electron... more All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this publication are entirely those of the author(s) and should not be attributed to the Economic Research Forum, members of its Board of Trustees, or its donors.
Journal of Development Effectiveness
International Journal of Development Issues
Purpose Quantifying the burden of war (BOW) beyond battle deaths is often impossible in ongoing c... more Purpose Quantifying the burden of war (BOW) beyond battle deaths is often impossible in ongoing conflicts. Consequently, indirect consequences of war can be overlooked in public BOW discussions. This paper aims to introduce a simulation model to estimate indirect child mortality attributable to war. Yemen was chosen as the example case because indirect child mortality from war likely outpaces direct casualties in the Yemen conflict. Design/methodology/approach A fixed effects panel regression was used to estimate elasticities between child mortality rate (CMR) (the rate of deaths among children under five years of age, per 1,000 live births) and two effects of war assumed to have the greatest explanatory power toward CMR: economic deterioration (measured by changes GDP per capita) and conflict magnitude (via the Major Episodes of Political Violence dataset). These elasticities were then used in a model to estimate the CMR in Yemen up to the year 2020. Findings Regression results sug...
The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development
SSRN Electronic Journal
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electron... more All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this publication are entirely those of the author(s) and should not be attributed to the Economic Research Forum, members of its Board of Trustees, or its donors.
Petrochilos, George A. (2003). Managerial Economics: A European Text. Palgrave McMillan.
This paper addresses the effect of initial asset inequality on trade openness. It provides theore... more This paper addresses the effect of initial asset inequality on trade openness. It provides theoretical and empirical support for initial asset inequality being inversely related to trade liberalization. The theoretical model assumes that government maximizes a Cobb-Douglas political support function for trade liberalization in which initial asset inequality is an exogenous variable. In order to empirically test our hypothesis we set up a simultaneous system of equations consisting of proxies for social equality, nature of the political regime, level of economic development, and trade structure. Using an unbalanced panel dataset of all countries for which data was available, empirical results show a strong correlation between inequality and trade openness. Addressing the difficult question of causality in the sense that inequality is in fact a source of trade resistance, we also test whether unequal countries join the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade later. The empirical results support our political-economy model that unequal countries face more trade liberalization constraints than equal ones.
Our study explores qualitative regime transitions. We add to the autocracy-democracy dichotomy at... more Our study explores qualitative regime transitions. We add to the autocracy-democracy dichotomy attributes capturing basic socio-economic conditions. Specifically, we study transitions among good or bad authoritarian rent extractors or creators, and good or bad democratic rent extractors or creators. Our conclusions challenge three perceptions about democratization. First, democracy does not necessarily lead to greater redistribution. Rather, democratization with equality is
This paper discusses countries along the dimensions of democracy vs. autocracy, income equality v... more This paper discusses countries along the dimensions of democracy vs. autocracy, income equality vs. inequality, and economic rent-extraction vs. creation and compares them in a regional context. Transitions within those qualitative characteristics are generally scarce. When occurring, they are limited to one aspect only. Transitions towards more democracy, income equality, and productive economic activity are most likely when relative equality is already given. Contrary to the general redistribution hypothesis of democratisation, this suggests that successful democratisation stems from initial income equality; it is not democratisation that leads to more income equality. Rising income inequality is identified as the greatest threat to the sustainability of favorable socioeconomic and political developments. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The discussion about the rentier state and the resource curse is typically about political oppres... more The discussion about the rentier state and the resource curse is typically about political oppression and macroeconomic vulnerabilities. Yet, the rentier state and resource curse presumably do even worse. They are also said to account for unequal economic opportunities, poor industrial capacities, and high fertility rates, which in turn explain low investment activities. As the economic, political, and social consequences of the natural resource curse have a long history of being examined separately, our aim is to add to the existing literature by showing their interrelationships in a path-analytical and cross-sectional framework. Building upon this framework, we then develop a simulation model to estimate various political, economic, and social consequences of the resource curse and rentier state. We then apply our model to the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, East Asia and the Pacific, and, as a subgroup of it, the four East Asian Tigers: Hong Kong, Malaysia, South Korea and Singapore. Our main interpretation of our simulation is that it is not so much the rentier state and the resource curse that make things even worse, but the fact that unfavorable economic, political, and social characteristics must have prevailed before the primary sector gained its economic relevance. Resource wealth and the rentier state then simply prevented economic, political, and social modernization.
We develop an empirical model allowing for the identification of four different resource mobiliza... more We develop an empirical model allowing for the identification of four different resource mobilization climates describing the period between 1986 and 2002. Those climates are based on different constellations of gross capital formation and domestic savings rates: super investor (high savings, high investment), resource exporter (high savings, low investment), resource importer (low savings, high investment), and vicious cycle (low savings,
This paper addresses the effect of initial asset inequality on trade openness. It provides theore... more This paper addresses the effect of initial asset inequality on trade openness. It provides theoretical and empirical support for initial asset inequality being inversely related to trade liberalization. The theoretical model assumes that government maximizes a Cobb-Douglas political support function for trade liberalization in which initial asset inequality is an exogenous variable. In order to empirically test our hypothesis we set up a simultaneous system of equations consisting of proxies for social equality, nature of the political regime, level of economic development, and trade structure. Using an unbalanced panel dataset of all countries for which data was available, empirical results show a strong correlation between inequality and trade openness. Addressing the difficult question of causality in the sense that inequality is in fact a source of trade resistance, we also test whether unequal countries join the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade later. The empirical results support our political-economy model that unequal countries face more trade liberalization constraints than equal ones.
The Political Economy of Wasta: Use and Abuse of Social Capital Networking, 2016
Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal, 2015
words) In this paper I develop a most simple model that determines equilibrium of political and e... more words) In this paper I develop a most simple model that determines equilibrium of political and economic empowerment in dependence of prevailing inequality of economic opportunities, economic actors' political organization, and the structure of the economy. Assuming that income inequality can be high or low, political organization democratic or authoritarian, and the economic structure predominantly rent-extracting of primary resources or
Motivated by the fact that Lebanon's consociational democracy has failed to prevent the outbreak ... more Motivated by the fact that Lebanon's consociational democracy has failed to prevent the outbreak of a long lasting civil conflict and periodic political crises, we reexamine the role that its political formula had played in this regard. We argue that consociationalism has exactly cemented what it was supposed to overcome, namely vertical and horizontal inequality. As Lebanon remained socially divided, it became vulnerable for internal conflict, which in turn was fueled by external factors. Our empirical results suggest that Lebanon is extremely unequal relative to its democratic and economic development level and that this inequality has substantial power in explaining armed conflict. A transition towards a fully fledged democracy would further reduce Lebanon's conflict potential.
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Papers by Marcus Marktanner