A number of bloggers have picked up on Economic Gangsters, including Tukopamoja, Prof. Michael Veseth (of the University of Puget Sound), and filmmaker Ted Hope. They have added some great insights and new takes on Economic Gangsters, and the broader problems of corruption and violence. (Justin Wolfers at the Freakonomics blog at New York Times also gave his perspective on the book earlier).

One of our favorite parts of Tukopamoja’s post was the following snippet, a true story from his fieldwork in Africa:

“Eight years ago, as I crossed the Uganda-Kenya border, I was sequestered in a shack, interrogated, threatened with prison, and ultimately required to pay a bribe by border guards. After that harrowing experience, I returned to my hotel and recounted the story to the first friendly face I saw: my sympathetic colleague Ted Miguel. Ted and his colleague Ray spent the succeeding years studying violence and corruption in poor countries; and this sweet book is the latest fruit of those labors.”

He goes on to write:

“This book won’t just show you that economists can be clever (although it will show you that): It shows that economics, cleverly applied, can illuminate some of the most intractable development problems of our time. I strongly recommend it.”

Thanks, T.!

– Ray and Ted

Nick Kristof gave Economic Gangsters a thumbs up on his blog today, calling it “smart and eminently readable”. In earlier New York Times columns, Nick had already written about the link between extreme weather and violence in Africa. In his post he supports the Rapid Conflict Prevention Support (RCPS) idea that Ray and Ted advocate in Economic Gangsters to try to stop armed conflicts before they start :

“The book also promotes the idea of automatic aid flows to vulnerable countries affected by climate shocks, such as drought. The idea is that otherwise, these countries risk being torn apart by conflict, even civil war — and that is far more costly to the global community than modest amounts of aid to cushion the shock. Since the average civil war in Africa imposes costs to itself and its neighbors of $100 billion, that sounds like a good idea.”

We couldn’t have said it any better ourselves.

- Ray and Ted

It’s  a sad irony of economic development that many of the countries “blessed” with natural resources are also some of the poorest places on the planet, and also the most violent - the so-called natural resource curse. When oil (and coffee and wheat and other commodity) prices were going up over the past few years, these resources became even more valuable. Do we expect that would result in more or less conflict and violence in countries cursed with too much oil or fertile soil? And what will happen now that commodity prices have taken a sudden nosedive?

According to a recent study by Oeindrila Duba and Juan Vargas, it hinges on the labor intensity (the number of workers you need to extract or nurture the resource relative to the number of buildings and machines). We’ve given a more detailed description in a recent Slate column of why higher prices means less violence in places with labor intensive resources (like coffee and other agricultural commodities), but more violence in those with capital intensive resources (like diamonds and oil):

Will there be blood?

It’s also something we discuss in some detail in Chapters 5 and 6 of Economic Gangsters, based on Ted’s work on civil war in Africa and witch killings in Tanzania (among other things).

-Ray F.

With the global banking system teetering on the edge of collapse and the Dow Jones Industrial Average experiencing a series of stomach-churning gyrations, it’s easy to get nostalgic for the good old days when our biggest worry was $120/barrel oil. Given the single-minded focus in recent days on the financial crisis and its myriad causes, it may have escaped your notice that the price of oil has quietly made its way back down to $80/barrel. Other commodities have seen similar declines, with wheat and corn prices off by 40 percent from their recent highs. This should provide some relief to recession-battered American consumers. But what does it mean for the countries where those commodities come from?

For some poor farmers, life may have just got a whole lot harder. The after-effects of some earlier commodity collapses suggest that civil war and genocide may also be on their list of worries: In 1989, the price of Arabica beans, the economic lifeblood of Rwanda’s poor farmers, fell by 50% and didn’t recover until 1995. But by this time, perhaps a million Tutsis were dead, victims of mass genocide arguably driven in part by the economic desperation of their Hutu countrymen.

In a Forbes op-ed yesterday, we describe this tragic nexus between commodity markets, poverty, and violence, and what the international aid community might do to prevent further tragedies:

How to Prevent War and Famine

The proposals we mention here are described in detail in Chapters 5 and 6 of Economic Gangsters: Violence, Corruption, and the Poverty of Nations.

-Ray & Ted

Miller-McCune Magazine recently interviewed Ray and Ted on Economic Gangsters. Check out the online version of the interview, including questions on the book’s ideas, insights and policy proposals, as well as on how Ray and Ted became fascinated with studying human depravity in the first place:

The Rational Ruffian: Why Crime Pays

From the highlight reel:

M-M: Speaking of popular appeal, Ray and his colleagues at Columbia made a big splash last year with their study on speed dating, which concluded that on first impression, men favor good looks and women favor intelligence. How does it feel to get your 15 minutes of fame for a randomized evaluation study?

RF: I’m not annoyed to have so much notoriety, but I’m annoyed that this is the article that made me notorious. I would never have predicted that it would have captured people’s imaginations the way it did. People frequently ask me about the link between studying corruption and studying dating. The obvious link is that they’re both domains of cheap talk. People lie to you a lot, and you have to come up with ways of uncovering how people reveal their preferences in actions, not words.

- Ray and Ted

We recently contributed another Commentary to National Public Radio’s Marketplace on the issue of how the current US financial and economic crisis will affect the world’s poor countries. While we worry about our housing values and 401(k)’s, the world’s poorest countries may pay a much higher price from a global recession and cuts in foreign aid. Listen to the audio here:

Don’t forget the already poor

– Ted M.

While we’re mostly interested in corruption and violence in poor countries, we certainly take note of the shenanigans that take place on Capitol Hill, Wall Street, and elsewhere. Recently, the New York Times ran a headline on a scandal-in-the-making among workers at the Long Island Railroad, where the rate of disability claims at retirement was close to 100 percent. The press described the LIRR retirees as corrupt rogues. We beg to differ. To find out why, see our opinion piece in the New York Post:

How Fraud Becomes Contagious

– Ray and Ted

We recently contributed a Commentary to National Public Radio’s Marketplace on an issue near and dear to Economic Gangsters, the economic returns to cultivating political connections. We discuss what the stock market might tell us about the value of connections to the current presidential nominees, and how to value political ties more generally. Check out the audio here:

Political Ties Boost Bottom Lines

This is a topic that we take up in some detail in our book. If you want to read more, take a look at chapter 2 of Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence and the Poverty of Nations for the full story.

– Ted M.