Ethnic tensions and social infrastructure

This paper examines the impact of hate crimes committed by White offenders on the educational attainment of Black individuals across United States commuting zones between 1990 and 2017. Using data on reported hate crimes from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reporting Program and data on educational attainment from the decennial Census and American Community Survey, we show an increase in per-capita hate crime in a commuting zone has a statistically significant and economically meaningful negative impact on college completion for young Black individuals residing in that commuting zone. A 10% increase in per-capita hate crime committed by White offenders reduces the proportion of Black individuals aged 21 to 30 with four or more years of college between 0.12 and 0.23 percentage points, a 1% to 2% reduction relative to the sample mean. In contrast, hate crime committed by White offenders has no negative impact on educational attainment for White individuals. Our results are robust to adjusting for geographic heterogeneity in hate crime reporting, including systematic under-reporting of hate crimes in the Southern United States. The findings in this paper add to the growing body of evidence establishing a negative effect of racial violence on long-run economic growth.

In the early 1990s, Rwanda was devastated by civil war and genocide. From April to July 1994, an interim government lead by ethnic Hutu extremists implemented the systematic murder of almost three-quarters of Rwanda’s ethnic Tutsi minority as well as ethnic Hutu who did not support the plan for genocide. The genocide of at least 500,000 ethnic Tutsi took place in the context of a civil war that began in October 1990, when the then-rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) entered Rwanda from its base in Uganda. The genocide ended in mid-July with the RPF’s total victory. It too committed widespread and systematic murder of ethnic Hutu civilians before and during the 1994 genocide. Owing to its gravity, the Rwandan genocide generated intense international interest, which, in turn, shapes how foreign authors have understood its causes and consequences. Initial comment immediately following the genocide often identified “ethnic hatred” or “tribalism” as its root cause. Among nonspecialist and popular writing on the genocide, the idea of tribalism as a root cause remains pervasive today. Scholars, journalists, and human rights agencies have sought to debunk the notion that ethnic hatred is what drove the 1994 genocide—addressing the “tribalism” argument is a central theme in academic and popular literatures. The literature on Rwanda’s post-genocide reconstruction and reconciliation policies is more polarized, divided generally between those who praise the government for its economic growth and human development policies and those who criticize its human rights record. Much of the literature on the Rwandan genocide is published in English, which marks a break from the predominantly French-language scholarly literature on Rwanda before 1994. The lack of pre-genocide literature in English means that many well-intentioned and capable authors have sometimes failed to address the historically relevant details so essential to understanding Rwandan society. Lack of historical depth also means that some authors rely on politicized interpretations of ethnicity and statehood that, in turn, legitimate the current RPF government’s interpretation of how the genocide happened, and what needs to be done to rebuild the country. This matters because of Rwanda’s highly politicized research environment, which has, in turn, created a polarized post-genocide literature that praises or pillories the ruling RPF. Acknowledging this politicized terrain matters because it shapes what is written on Rwanda, and who is able or willing to do so. See also the separate Oxford Bibliographies article Rwanda.

T he importance of foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing countries has begun to spread very rapidly, especially after the transition of command economies countries into open markets. Many countries see attracting FDI as an important element in their strategy for economic growth because FDI is widely regarded as an amalgamation of capital, technology, marketing, and management. So, it is important to understand why in many countries FDI inflow is lower than the expected. This paper is to investigate the linkages between political risk and foreign direct investment inflows. International country risk guide (ICRG) has dispersed separate financial, economic, and political ratings, and has identified 12 different political risks indices. Theoretically, it seems that there is a relationship between FDI and political risks, which is precisely the analysis undertaken in the current study. This paper employs an instrumental variable approach to investigate Iran time series data from 1985 to 2016. Wu-Hausman test is used to test for the presence of endogeneity, and two-stage least square estimator (2SLS) is estimated to find out the relationship between political risks indices and FDI inflows in Iran. The results show that external conflict, ethnic tensions, socioeconomic condition, investment profile, military, and religious tensions are the highly significant determinants of foreign investment inflows in Iran.

This paper analyzes the course of French society in terms of the time path of a set of variables: exoge nous politico-military pressure, economic growth, unemployment, price rise, population growth, ethnic tension, public unrest, administrative effectiveness, expectations of socii, and an overall measure of societal viability termed Government Stability (Z or GS). The variables reflect the performance of interacting societal institutions that together constitute a complex adaptive total-society system. Government operates as the regulatory subsystem of society. The values of the variables during a given period represent the state of the system. They are ob tained through a simulation algorithm which simu- Zates a societal flow graph representing the pattern of internal system dynamics. The extension of simulation to past and future periods permits retrodictive confirmation and predictive inference. The correspondence and consistency of the generated results with the reported and available data makes possible the validation of the analysis. The simu lation algorithm, which is applicable to all socie tal systems, is here applied to chart the course of French society for the two decades from 1955 to 1973. Values of economic growth, price rise, unemployment, and change of government generated by simulation are directly confirmable from known empirical facts. The confirmation of qualitative variables like ethnic tension, administrative effectiveness, and expectations of socii as gener ated by the model is, however, based on inference. They conform to the broad empirical pattern as outlined in the secondary sources of data.

Anton Hemerijck, Mariana Mazzucato and Edoardo Reviglio, in chapter 7, offer an original perspective: the most competitive economies in the EU spend more on social policy and public services than the less successful ones. However, the twenty-first century knowledge economies are ageing societies and require European welfare states to focus as much – if not more – on ex-ante social investment capacitation than on ex-post social security compensation. The growing needs for social services will require new and updated social infrastructure. According to a report on social infrastructure in Europe coordinated by former President of the European Commission Romano Prodi in 2018, the minimal gap is estimated at €100–150 bn per annum and represents a total gap of over 1.5 tn in 2018–2030. Long-term, flexible and efficient investment in education, health and affordable housing is considered essential for the economic growth of the EU, the well-being of its people and a successful move towards upward convergence in the EU. But how do we finance the great new needs with such a pressure on public finances? The chapter suggests innovative financial solutions using institutional and community resources to lower to cost of funding of social infrastructure. One such solution is the creation of a large European Fund for Social Infrastructure, owned by State Investment Banks (SIBs) and institutional long-term investors, which would fund its operations by issuing a European Social Bond. In this endeavour, a central role must be played by the EIB and by State Investment Banks. The authors discuss the potential role of these “mission-oriented” SIBs in social innovation by changing their mission. They should not simply “compensate market failures” but also become institutions that “shape the market” and become major providers of sustainable long-term and patient finance to deliver public value.

INTRODUCTION A country's level of human and economic development is closely related to its levels of achievement in physical and social infrastructure. While physical infrastructure is an important determinant of domestic production, good social infrastructure is vital for human development as well as economic progress through better educated, better skilled and healthier citizens. Education and health are the main constituents of social infrastructure. Many studies document the contribution of education and health to economic development in which they are considered investments in human capital comparable to physical means of production, such as factories and machines. The economic attainments of Europe, North America, Japan and East Asia are inconceivable without their attainments in human capital; hence, the importance of social infrastructure. Therefore, it can be surmised that investment in human capital through education, training, health and medical facilities yields additional output and economic returns. Economic growth theory also sees human capital as an important source of economic growth. Further, to achieve rapid economic growth, it is essential that the population should be well-educated and trained to be able to work effectively. It is also essential for reducing poverty. No amount of welfare measures can help a poor illiterate person the way education can by enabling him to become more productive and skilled. Therefore, effective education for the masses is crucial for reducing poverty and sustaining high rates of economic growth over long periods by providing a well-skilled labour force. The role of physical infrastructure in promoting economic development has been well-documented in the literature [Estache (2006), Sahoo and Dash (2008, 2009)]. Physical infrastructure not only contributes to enhance productivity, but it also assists in the realization of the potential ability of human capital and creates situations in which the potential can fully function. It also directly and indirectly contributes towards improving the quality and safety of people's lives. Within the scope of infrastructure, roads, railways, air transportation, seaports, electric power and telecommunications and information technology are often used as services and intermediate goods essential for the productive processes of the manufacturing, agriculture and services sectors.

Keywords: Political Instability, Corruption, Economic Growth, Political Conflict1.IntroductionThe major aim of this paper is to examine the empirical relations between economic growth and a broad group of political instability factors including corruption, government instability, internal and external conflicts, religious and ethnic tensions, democratic accountability and bureaucracy quality. Moreover, one of the main objectives of our paper is to explore the effects of serious problems such as political instability and corruption on economic growth for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries during the period 1984-2012. Thus, most of the countries in our sample are developed countries of the world.The main contribution and distinctive characteristic of this article is to focus not only on the relationship between political stability and economic growth, but also on the relations between some specific categories of political instability and economic growth. It is generally accepted that corruption is an element of political instability as well. In this paper, we employ system GMM estimator for linear dynamic panel data models in order to overcome a potential endogeneity problem.The relationship between political instability and economic growth has been an issue of concern for long. Political instability is one of the conventional themes of the modern political economy theory. Modern theory of political economy suggests that political stability plays a significant role in economic growth of a country. Thus, an unstable political system could seriously hinder economic growth. Within the theoretical framework of modern political economy, a government is considered to be inefficient if policy objectives vary over a short period of time. Thus, coalition governments are a serious threat and to be more prone to the political stability. Moreover, modern political economy theory emphasizes that political instability also affects the level of economic growth in the country as the rates of economic growth are correlated with persistent policies of government and how government perform these policies (Barro, 2013).On the other hand, corruption is a widespread phenomenon in several countries around the world, which are regarded by economists as seriously harmful to economic growth (Aisen & Veiga, 2011). The majority of academic research reveals that corruption impedes economic growth, creates political instability, weakens the state's capacity to tax, undermines spending programs, increases the cost and lowers the quality of public investment (IMF, 2016). Some economists consider that corruption can also have distributional consequences. Corruption increases income inequality and poverty through lower economic growth, biased tax systems favoring the rich, and lower social spending (Gupta, Davoodi & Alonso-Terme, 2002). However, some researchers suggest that the impact of corruption on economic growth is related with factors such as the country's legal and institutional framework, quality of governance and political regime. Thus, in some highly regulated countries, corruption can compensate for red tape and institutional weaknesses and overcome the government failure in the economy (Campos, Dimova & Saleh, 2010). Since there is a large consensus that corruption hinders economic growth and increases socio-economic inequalities, international organizations such as the World Bank and OECD emphasize that corruption is among the greatest obstacles to economic and social development (OECD, 2013).The remaining part of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents a brief literature review. Section 3 provides information about the data, empirical model, and empirical methodology. Section 4 contains empirical results. Section 5 includes a summary and concluding remarks.2.Brief Literature ReviewAlesina, Ozler, Roubini, & Swagel (1992) define political instability narrowly as the tendency of the change in cabinet either by constitutional or unconstitutional means. …

Indonesia's economic prosperity is measured by its growth, a key United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 8). Despite funding increases, education and healthcare gaps impede workforce development and economic progress. Inadequate social infrastructure reduces production efficiency. Limited research exists on the impact of human capital, physical capital, and social infrastructure on Indonesia's growth. This research examines these factors and technological progress on GDP using an endogenous growth framework. The study examines physical capital's contribution, assesses human capital's impact, analyzes social infrastructure's effect, and explores their interplay in growth. It analyzed 54 years of data from 1970 to 2023, focusing on GDP per capita, physical capital, labor, human capital, technological progress, and social infrastructure. Data came from World Bank Development Indicators and Penn World Table 10.1. Researchers converted data to logarithmic scales and analyzed them using EViews 12. Ordinary least squares estimation examined macroeconomic indicators. Augmented Dickey-Fuller and Philips-Perron tests checked variable stationarity. Johansen cointegration results showed cointegration between variables, with lag order 2 as optimal. Findings revealed that physical capital, labor, and human capital positively affected output, while social infrastructure negatively impacted output due to resource misallocation. Technological advancement has no effect. The Theil coefficient of 0.003355 indicated outstanding performance, while SMAPE showed 49.35% average prediction error. The study concluded that capital, labor, human capital, and social infrastructure influence growth. Addressing corruption, disparities, and infrastructure gaps between rural and urban regions is essential. Implementing governance reform, fair investment, innovative financing, and community involvement will help realize the social infrastructure's potential for growth.

This article analyses the pattern and trends in inter-district disparities in the levels of development particularly in levels of income, and physical and social infrastructure by using multivariate analysis. It finds wide regional disparities across districts in the availability of social and economic infrastructure which have persisted and prolonged over time. Amongst the four broader economic regions, the districts of western region continued to occupy top ranks in economic infrastructure as compared to other three regions, viz. central, eastern and Bundelkhand. Bundelkhand region presents the grim scenario with almost six out of seven districts falling in the category of backward districts in India. The central and eastern regions have almost mediocre status. Such a pattern provides a strong justification for the recent policy initiatives of the state government for improving the economic infrastructure especially banking services, industrialization and agricultural infrastructure to facilitate production and sale of outputs and social infrastructure for building human capital. However, budgetary support for such initiatives and weak implementation are major concerns for any meaningful results, particularly in backward districts. The article advocates more rigorous efforts towards developing economic and social infrastructure, particularly in laggard districts of the state. This would also help in accelerating the pace of economic growth and employment opportunities, and reducing regional disparities in development in Uttar Pradesh.

The paper examines the role of various types of institutions on economic growth through capital formation and technological progress. The Solow residual is taken as a proxy of technological progress. The study uses panel data from twenty-one developing countries from the International Development Association. The sample period extends from 1990 to 2013. The institutions are categorized as economic, financial, political, and social institutions. The Solow growth model is the basic reference point of this study. The GMM panel estimation technique is applied due to the problem of endogeneity. The relationship between GDP per labor and institutions is explored through technology and stock of capital per labor. The results of this study show a significantly positive relationship between economic growth and economic, political, social, and financial institutions. Moreover, based on empirical results this study concludes that to achieve economic growth in developing countries, the government should strengthen its institutions and control the corruption, ethnic tension, injustice, terrorism, and intolerance in the society. The governments of developing countries should strengthen the financial and economic institutions to enhance growth via increasing investment in the country.

The BRICS nations-Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa-have grown significantly in importance over the past few decades, playing a vital role in the development and growth of the global economy. This expansion has not been without cost, either, since these countries' concern over environmental deterioration has risen sharply. Both researchers and decision-makers have focused a lot of attention on the connection between economic growth and ecological sustainability. By using nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) approach, the complex relationships were analyzed between important economic indicators-such as gross domestic product (GDP), ecological innovations (EI), energy consumption (ENC), institutional performance (IP), and trade openness (TOP)-and their effect on carbon emissions and nitrous oxide emissions in the BRICS countries from 1990 to 2021, this study seeks to contribute to this important dialog. Principal component analysis is formed for technological innovations and institutional performance using six (ICT service exports as a percentage of service exports, computer communications as a percentage of commercial service exports, fixed telephone subscriptions per 100 people, internet users as a percentage of the population, number of patent applications, and R&D expenditures as a percentage of GDP) and twelve (government stability, investment profile, socioeconomic conditions, internal conflict, external conflict, military in politics, control of corruption, religious tensions, ethnic tensions, law and order, bureaucracy quality, and democratic accountability) distinct indicators, respectively. The results of nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag estimation show that increase in economic growth would increase carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions. The positive and negative shocks in trade openness have positive and significant impact on carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions in BRICS countries. Furthermore, the positive shock energy consumptions have positive and significant effect on Brazil and India when carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions are used. However, EKC exists in BRICS countries when carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions are used. According to long-term estimation, energy consumption and technological innovations in the BRICS countries show a strong and adverse link with nitrous oxide and a favorable relationship with carbon dioxide emissions. In the long run, environmental indicators are seen to have a major and unfavorable impact in BRICS nations. Finally, it is proposed that BRICS nations can assure environmental sustainability if they support creative activities, enhance their institutions, and support free trade policies.

This article explores the social structure, administrative system, and economic development of Al-Andalus during the period of Muslim rule. Al-Andalus experienced significant cultural, scientific, and economic growth, driven by interethnic cooperation, an effective governance model, and a thriving economy. Goals and objectives – The primary aim of this research is to analyze the composition of social groups, their interactions, the administrative framework, and the factors influencing economic progress in Al-Andalus. The study seeks to determine the role of ethnic groups in society, evaluate the efficiency of the governance system, and examine economic development trends using historical sources. Despite ethnic tensions between Arabs and Berbers, cultural integration continued. The administrative system was well-structured, ensuring stability and military strength. Economic growth was fueled by urban prosperity, trade expansion, and agricultural advancements. The flourishing of Islamic sciences and the Arabic language further enriched society. The combination of cultural exchange, strong governance, and economic success made Al-Andalus one of the most prosperous regions of the medieval Islamic world. This study also contributes to the development of national historiography.

Institutional quality plays an undeniable role in every goal of accelerating economic growth. While the MENA region offers many natural assets that can make investments in renewable energy profitable, this region suffers from several institutional quality issues. In this line of thinking, this paper examines the relationship between renewable energy and economic growth in MENA countries taking into account institutional measures. To get a deeper insight into the relationship between this triangle of annual variables spreading from 1986 to 2015, our study considered a broader set of institutional variables, namely, corruption, bureaucracy quality, democracy accountability, law and order, and ethnic tensions. Using panel cointegration tests, we found that renewable energy, economic growth, and any institutional measures, of all considered in this study, are cointegrated. Furthermore, we found a strong causality running from renewable energy and any institutional measure, except law and order, to growth. A reverse path is also observed since there is also a strong causality running from growth to renewable energy when the causal regression includes any institutional measure. Our findings corroborate the fact that establishing an attractive institutional framework in MENA countries could be of ultimate importance in the profitability of renewable energy investments and in accelerating economic growth.

The paper examines a paradigmatic example of post-conflict economic development of Vukovar, Croatia. It represents a pertinent case study for localities encountering analogous challenges, most notably urban areas in Ukraine in the near future. The war that broke out in 1991 brought significant human casualties, population displacement, and extensive destruction of residential, social, and economic infrastructure. The completion of the peaceful reintegration of Vukovar into Croatia’s legal system in 1998 marked the beginning of the socio-economic revitalization process. The research scrutinizes the primary impediments and prospects for Vukovar’s economic growth, probing why substantial investments in reconstructing housing, transport, communal infrastructure, and fiscal incentives for businesses have not paralleled its economic performance. It concentrates on the local business climate and influential factors as potential explanations for this discrepancy. The topic was designed as a case study and was covered by document analysis, survey method, and semi-structured interviews. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, the study collates perspectives from entrepreneurs and business support institutions. The results confirmed that reconstruction of housing and social infrastructure is necessary, but more conditions are needed for successful post-conflict economic development, and that the business climate in lagging local units highly depends on state- and locally designed business-support measures.

Confucian Democracy in East Asia: A Discussion of Sungmoon Kim’s <i>Democracy After Virtue: Toward Pragmatic Confucian Democracy</i>