The Wild West IS Wild: The Homicide Resource Curse

Mathieu Couttenier ( ), Pauline Grosjean ( ) and Marc Sangnier ( )

Journal of the European Economic Association, 2017, vol. 15, issue 3, 558-585

Abstract: We document interpersonal violence as a dimension of the resource curse. We rely on a historical natural experiment in the United States, where mineral discoveries occurred sometimes before, sometimes after formal institutions were established in the county of discovery. In places where mineral discoveries occurred before formal institutions were established, there were more homicides per capita historically and the effect has persisted to this day. Today, the share of homicides and assaults explained by the historical circumstances of mineral discoveries is comparable to the effect of education or income. Our results imply that short-term and quasi-exogenous variations in the institutional environment can lead to large and persistent differences in cultural and institutional development.

JEL-codes: K42 N31 O14 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)

Date: 2017

References: Add references at CitEc

Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)

http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeea/jvw011 (application/pdf)

Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:

Working Paper: The Wild West IS Wild: The Homicide Resource Curse (2017)

Working Paper: The Wild West is Wild: The Homicide Resource Curse (2016)

Working Paper: The Wild West is Wild: The Homicide Resource Curse (2016)

Working Paper: The Wild West is Wild: The Homicide Resource Curse (2014)

This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jeurec:v:15:y:2017:i:3:p:558-585.

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of the European Economic Association from European Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.

Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ( ).