Marcus Marktanner and Luc Noiset
The purpose of this paper is to critique recent findings that democratic practices are positively related to homicide rates.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to critique recent findings that democratic practices are positively related to homicide rates.
Design/methodology/approach
Economic rational choice model supported by empirical evidence.
Findings
It was found that higher homicide rates are only characteristic of democracies that fail to respond to the median voter's call for equitable social development.
Originality/value
The paper makes an original distinction between conservative and social democracies, operationalizes this distinction theoretically and empirically, and shows that higher homicide rates are a phenomenon of conservative, not social, democracies.
Details
Keywords
Marcus Marktanner, Edward Mienie and Luc Noiset
– The purpose of this paper is to estimate the effect of armed conflict on the vulnerability to natural hazards.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to estimate the effect of armed conflict on the vulnerability to natural hazards.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors employ panel estimates of disaster deaths on a lagged indicator of the presence of armed conflict.
Findings
Disaster deaths following armed conflict are on average 40 percent higher compared to disasters that are chronologically detached from armed conflict events; a legacy of armed conflict accounts for roughly 14 percent of the approximately five million disaster deaths between 1961 and 2010.
Practical implications
A global estimate of the relationship between armed conflict and disaster vulnerability can help disaster management planners identify policy priorities associated with disaster prevention and management.
Originality/value
The analysis reinforces the findings in previous qualitative studies of a causal link between armed conflict and increased disaster vulnerability and provides a quantitative estimate of the average magnitude of this relationship.
Details
Keywords
Xudong Chen, Yingge Lin and Luc P Noiset
The scholarly literature that examines the economic assimilation of migrant families has focussed on the educational and economic achievements of the children of international…
Abstract
Purpose
The scholarly literature that examines the economic assimilation of migrant families has focussed on the educational and economic achievements of the children of international migrants relative to the children of native born parents. Lower relative incomes of the children of immigrants might be attributable to discrimination, while higher relative incomes could be attributable to ambitious parents who produce more ambitious children. These potential effects have been difficult to disentangle. The purpose of this paper is to control for discrimination by examining internal migration in Honduras, allowing us to isolate evidence for or against the “ambition” effect.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique to ask if the children of migrants are similar or different than their parents in their attitudes toward work and economic advancement.
Findings
This study finds that migrants are relatively hard workers in the sense that they experience relatively high marginal effects on earnings from improved socio-economic characteristics, such as years of schooling. The study also finds that these migrants do not pass on this hard-work ethic to their children, who experience much smaller marginal effects from increased years of schooling and other socio-economic characteristics.
Originality/value
This study demonstrates that the children of migrants do not necessarily inherit the ambitious work ethic characteristic of their migrant parents. This result has important implications for studies that examine the assimilation and economic progress of migrant families, particularly those studies that use second-generation earnings as a measure of assimilation and economic progress.