Democratization and Economic Output in Sub-Saharan Africa

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel de Kadt ◽  
Stephen B. Wittels
Keyword(s):  
Control Method ◽  
National Level ◽  
Economic Effects ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
Synthetic Control Method ◽  
Economic Output ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Positive Effect

Does democratization increase economic output? Answers to this question are inconsistent partly due to the challenges of examining the causal forces behind political and economic phenomena that occur at the national level. We employ a new empirical approach, the synthetic control method, to study the economic effects of democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa over the period 1975–2008. This method yields case-specific causal estimates, which show that political reform associated with the “third wave” of democracy had highly heterogeneous, yet often substantively important effects in Africa. In some countries democratization adversely affected economic output while in others it exerted an analogous positive effect.

scholarly journals Joint culpability: The effects of medical marijuana laws on crime

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-Wei Chu ◽  
W Townsend
Keyword(s):  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Control Method ◽  
National Level ◽  
Medical Marijuana ◽  
Property Crime ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
Synthetic Control Method ◽  
Medical Marijuana Laws

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. Most U.S. states have passed medical marijuana laws. In this paper, we study the effects of these laws on violent and property crime. We first estimate models that control for city fixed effects and flexible city-specific time trends. To supplement this regression analysis, we use the synthetic control method which can relax the parallel trend assumption and better account for heterogeneous policy effects. Both the regression analysis and the synthetic control method suggest no causal effects of medical marijuana laws on violent or property crime at the national level. We also find no strong effects within individual states, except for in California where the medical marijuana law reduced both violent and property crime by 20%.

scholarly journals Joint culpability: The effects of medical marijuana laws on crime

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-Wei Chu ◽  
W Townsend
Keyword(s):  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Control Method ◽  
National Level ◽  
Medical Marijuana ◽  
Property Crime ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
Synthetic Control Method ◽  
Medical Marijuana Laws

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. Most U.S. states have passed medical marijuana laws. In this paper, we study the effects of these laws on violent and property crime. We first estimate models that control for city fixed effects and flexible city-specific time trends. To supplement this regression analysis, we use the synthetic control method which can relax the parallel trend assumption and better account for heterogeneous policy effects. Both the regression analysis and the synthetic control method suggest no causal effects of medical marijuana laws on violent or property crime at the national level. We also find no strong effects within individual states, except for in California where the medical marijuana law reduced both violent and property crime by 20%.

scholarly journals How Mass Immigration Affects Countries with Weak Economic Institutions: A Natural Experiment in Jordan

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 533-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Nowrasteh ◽  
Andrew C Forrester ◽  
Cole Blondin
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Control Method ◽  
Gulf War ◽  
Economic Institutions ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
Direct Impact ◽  
Synthetic Control Method ◽  
Developed Nations ◽  
Positive Effect

Abstract To what extent does immigration affect the economic institutions in destination countries? While there is much evidence that economic institutions in developed nations are either unaffected or improved after immigration, there is little evidence of how immigration affects the economic institutions of developing countries that typically have weaker institutions. Using the Synthetic Control Method, this study estimates a significant and long-lasting positive effect on Jordanian economic institutions from the surge of refugees from the First Gulf War. The surge of refugees to Jordan in 1990–1991 was massive, equal to 10 percent of Jordan’s population in 1990. Importantly, these refugees were able to have a large and direct impact on Jordanian economic institutions because they could work, live, and vote immediately upon entry due to a quirk in Jordanian law. The refugee surge was the main mechanism by which Jordan’s economic institutions improved in the decades that followed.

The Economic Impact of State Splitting in Brazil

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Carvalho de Andrade Lima
Keyword(s):  
Economic Impact ◽  
Control Method ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
Synthetic Control Method ◽  
Per Capita Gdp ◽  
Fiscal Capacity ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
State Splitting ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Positive Effect

AbstractThe Brazilian state of Tocantins was splinted from the state of Goiás in 1988. This was the most recent first-tier subnational border reform in Brazil and involved an area that corresponds to 7.6% of the whole national territory. Using the synthetic control method, this paper estimates that the split increased the per capita GDP of the affected region by an average of 8.26%, and the positive effect persisted over the years. Additionally, we show that the Tocantins benefited more from the border reform than Goiás, and the increase of fiscal capacity of affected subnational governments may partially explain the positive effects of splitting.

scholarly journals Inclusive Governance and Biodiversity Conservation: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 3847
Author(s):  
Inayat Ullah ◽  
Dong-Young Kim
Keyword(s):  
Protected Areas ◽  
Control Method ◽  
Economic Incentives ◽  
Iucn Red List ◽  
Red List ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Threat Level ◽  
Sub Saharan

We examine the conservation effects attributable to changes in the size of community-governed protected areas (PAs) by adopting a generalized difference-in-difference (DID) design with a two-way fixed effect regression model and synthetic control methods. Panel data from the extraordinary datasets of the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPAs) and the Red List of International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) are used for 32 Sub-Saharan African countries in this study. Our generalized DID estimates show that countries with community-governed PAs have reduced the IUCN Red List threat level by 17% for mammals. We also find stronger evidence of the effect of community-governed PAs on the IUCN threat level using synthetic control method that allows us to match the “intervention countries” with those countries that exhibit similar pre-intervention threat level. Our results are robust on alternate specifications in which we exploit variations in the cumulative size of the designated PAs differentiated by the IUCN governance types. We also compare the effect of strictly state-governed PAs with community-governed PAs. Our findings provide evidence in support of recent qualitative studies that find positive responses of community participation towards common goods that carry potential economic incentives. This paper contributes to the idea that inclusive environmental policies and legislations yield environmental gains not at the cost of social exclusion.

Applying Synthetic Control Method to Estimate the Impact of the Lava Jato Operation on the Worldwide Governance Indicators in Brazil

2021 ◽  
pp. 2631309X2110178
Author(s):  
Eduardo Carvalho Nepomuceno Alencar ◽  
Bryant Jackson-Green
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Control Method ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
Synthetic Control Method ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Governance Indicators ◽  
Regulatory Quality ◽  
Legal Judgments ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Control Of Corruption

In 2014, the most prominent anti-corruption investigation in Latin America called Lava Jato, exposed a Brazilian corruption scheme with reverberations in 61 countries, resulting in legal judgments for nearly 5 billion USD in reimbursements thus far. This article applies the synthetic control method on data from 135 countries (2002–2018) to test the hypothesis that Lava Jato impacts the Worldwide Governance Indicators in Brazil. The findings reveal that Lava Jato negatively affects control of corruption, the rule of law, and regulatory quality. There are signs of possible improvement in at least the corruption and the rule of law measures. This paper brings value to the criminological body of literature, notably lacking in the Global South.

scholarly journals When is a Match Sufficient? A Score-based Balance Metric for the Synthetic Control Method

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-228
Author(s):  
Layla Parast ◽  
Priscillia Hunt ◽  
Beth Ann Griffin ◽  
David Powell
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Control Method ◽  
Control Unit ◽  
Treated Group ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
Donor Pool ◽  
Synthetic Control Method ◽  
The Mean ◽  
The Impact

AbstractIn some applications, researchers using the synthetic control method (SCM) to evaluate the effect of a policy may struggle to determine whether they have identified a “good match” between the control group and treated group. In this paper, we demonstrate the utility of the mean and maximum Absolute Standardized Mean Difference (ASMD) as a test of balance between a synthetic control unit and treated unit, and provide guidance on what constitutes a poor fit when using a synthetic control. We explore and compare other potential metrics using a simulation study. We provide an application of our proposed balance metric to the 2013 Los Angeles (LA) Firearm Study [9]. Using Uniform Crime Report data, we apply the SCM to obtain a counterfactual for the LA firearm-related crime rate based on a weighted combination of control units in a donor pool of cities. We use this counterfactual to estimate the effect of the LA Firearm Study intervention and explore the impact of changing the donor pool and pre-intervention duration period on resulting matches and estimated effects. We demonstrate how decision-making about the quality of a synthetic control can be improved by using ASMD. The mean and max ASMD clearly differentiate between poor matches and good matches. Researchers need better guidance on what is a meaningful imbalance between synthetic control and treated groups. In addition to the use of gap plots, the proposed balance metric can provide an objective way of determining fit.

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