THE WELFARE COST OF LAWLESSNESS: EVIDENCE FROM SOMALI PIRACY

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Besley, Timothy; Fetzer, Thiemo; Mueller, Hannes
• 署名单位: University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR); University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC); CSIC - Institut d'Analisi Economica (IAE); Barcelona School of Economics
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1542-4766
• DOI: 10.1111/jeea.12114
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 203-239
• 关键词: INTERNATIONAL-TRADE; CORRUPTION; ECONOMICS; CONFLICT; origins; time

摘要

In spite of general agreement that establishing the rule of law is central to properly functioning economies, little is known about the cost of law and order breakdowns. This paper studies a specific context of this by estimating the effect of Somali piracy attacks on shipping costs using data on shipping contracts in the dry bulk market. To estimate the effect of piracy, we look at shipping routes whose shortest path exposes them to piracy and find that the increase in attacks in 2008 led to around an 8% to 12% increase in costs. From this we calculate the welfare loss imposed by piracy. We estimate that generating around 120 USD million of revenue for Somali pirates led to a welfare loss in excess of 630 USD million, making piracy an expensive way of making transfers.