Contents:
1. Welcome to the twelfth MICROCON Newsletter
2. Publications
Research Working Papers
3. News from MICROCON partners
World Bank workshop held at Peace Research Institute Oslo by MICROCON members
MICROCON members involved in World Development Report 2011
Patricia Justino in advisory panel on UNESCO report on conflict and education
Dear Colleague,
This is the twelfth MICROCON Newsletter. It contains news on our events, research findings, publications and news from MICROCON partners.
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2. Publications
Research Working Papers
RWP34: Institutions and Conflict: Communal Water Management in North-West Namibia - Diego Augusto Menestrey Schwieger
In the context of recent legal developments in Namibia promoting the common based management of water resources, the main focus of the project underlying this paper was to gain a detailed impression of how the rural communities in the country were dealing with the development of institutional arrangements for the water access and usage. Based on an anthropological fieldwork this paper aims to describe and to analyse the conflict over water a rural community in North-West Namibia is confronted with. From a theoretical perspective, the objective of this paper is to analyse the role of power in the development of institutions by means of Knight’s (1992) bargaining theory of institutional development. This paper concludes that the case study provides important evidence that the development of institutions at the local level can be the by-product of a strategic conflict and not the result of the users’ attempts to achieve collective goals, as frequently assumed by the mainstream communal natural resource management theory.
RWP35: Remittances and Labor Supply in Post-Conflict Tajikistan - Patricia Justino and Olga Shemyakina
This paper analyzes the impact of remittances on the labor supply of men and women in post-conflict Tajikistan. We find that on average men and women from remittance-receiving households are less likely to participate in the labor market and supply fewer hours when they do. The negative effect of remittances on labor supply is smaller for women, which is an intriguing result as other studies on remittances and labor supply (primarily focused on Latin America) have shown that female labor supply is more responsive to remittances. The results are robust to using different measures of remittances and inclusion of variables measuring migration of household members. We estimate a joint effect of remittances and an individual’s residence in a conflict-affected area during the Tajik civil war. Remittances had a larger impact on the labor supply of men living in conflict-affected areas compared to men in less conflict-affected areas. The impact of remittances on the labor supply of women does not differ by their residence in both the more or less conflict affected area.
RWP36: Marrying Up: The Role of Sex Ratio in Assortative Matching - Ran Abramitzky, Adeline Delavande and Luís Vasconcelos
We assemble a novel dataset to study the impact of male scarcity on marital assortative matching and other marriage market outcomes using the large shock that WWI caused to the number of French men. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that post war in regions with higher mortality rates: men were less likely to marry women of lower social classes; men were more likely and women less likely to marry; out-of-wedlock births increased; divorce rates decreased; and the age gap decreased. These findings are consistent with men improving their position in the marriage market as they become scarcer.
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3. News from MICROCON partners
World Bank workshop held at Peace Research Institute Oslo by MICROCON members
MICROCON Deputy Director Philip Verwimp is directing a project for the World Bank on Gender and Conflict. Women and men experience violent conflict differently, as actors, perpetrators and victims. Empirical analysis of the gender-differential is necessary to gain recognition of and muster support for a gendered approach in programs targeted at populations in conflict areas. Gender inequalities which existed before a conflict can be aggravated because of the conflict, but they can also radically alter.
Six country case studies address the same set of questions and use similar methods. The case study countries are Burundi, Rwanda, Nepal, Tajikistan, Timor Leste and Colombia. The results of the project were recently presented at a workshop at the Peace Research Institute Oslo.
MICROCON members involved in World Development Report 2011
MICROCON researchers are making a number of contributions to the preparation of the 2011 World Development Report, whose theme will be Conflict, Security and Development. The preliminary findings were reported by Nick van Praag at the European Development Days on 6 December, and MICROCON Director Patricia Justino was the discussant for the session.
Patricia, Tilman Brück, Philip Verwimp and Alexandra Adveenko have authored a background paper for the report entitled, 'Identifying Conflict and Violence in Micro-Level Surveys' (available here, and forthcoming as a MICROCON Research Working Paper). Debarati Guha-Sapir has co-authored an input paper on the Demographic and Health Consequences of Civil Conflict.
In addition, Philip Verwimp's project on gender and conflict mentioned above will be providing background papers to the WDR2011 as well as to the WDR2012 on Gender Equality and Development.
Patricia Justino in advisory panel on UNESCO report on conflict and education
Patricia was selected as a member of the advisory panel for the 2011 UNESCO report: Education and Violent Conflict. The 2011 Global Monitoring Report will examine the damaging consequences of conflict for the Education for All goals. It will also set out an agenda for protecting the right to education during conflict, strengthening provision for children, youth and adults affected by conflict, and rebuilding education systems in countries emerging from conflict. The report will be launched on 1 March 2011 in New York.