The ability of states to exercise authority often varies considerably within their borders, a feature that influences both development outcomes and conflict dy- namics. Yet, we lack reliable empirical measures of the uneven reach of states. In this paper, we develop a methodology to predict state presence at granular spatial resolutions and demonstrate the approach using data from Sub-Saharan Africa. We combine a range of publicly available data which indicate state presence—e.g., travel time to the capital—with geolocated survey data of residents’ experiences with subnational governance. Then, we employ a machine learning algorithm that learns how the input variables relate to experienced state presence and extrapolates the predictions such that we obtain a measure of local state presence across all of Sub-Saharan Africa. We validate the resultant measure through a range of tests and showcase its usefulness by demonstrating how local state presence influences development outcomes.

Transitional justice practices frequently involve public apologies where former combatants confess their wrongdoings and ask for forgiveness, with the underlying assumption that such displays facilitate the reintegration of ex-combatants into society. However, little is known about the public response to ex-combatant apologies. In this article, we investigate the causal effect of an armed group apology on attitudes toward ex-combatant reintegration in Colombia. Our study builds on a novel experiment implemented in Meta, a conflict-ridden department of Colombia. The experiment entailed exposing a subset of participants to a video in which a former rebel group leader apologizes for violent acts committed by their armed group during the civil war. To examine the extent to which external actors influence the effectiveness of apologies, we incorporated third-party ‘encouragements to forgive’ (endorsements) in two additional treatment conditions. Our analysis demonstrates that, on average, participants do not exhibit higher reintegration attitudes when exposed to the apology, regardless of third-party endorsements. However, the absence of a treatment effect is not due to an indifference to the apology. In an exploratory heterogeneity analysis, we show that the apology induces negative effects on some indicators of reintegration attitudes among participants that did not support the peace agreement. This finding aligns with qualitative data gathered in a follow-up survey, which indicates that opponents of the peace agreement generally describe negative emotional responses to the FARC-EP apology. The results call for a reconsideration of unchallenged prescriptions of public apologies after conflict.

Climate mitigation constitutes an intergenerational moral dilemma; the decisions we make today will inevitably shape the prospects for generations to come. Yet, we still know little about the relationship between intergenerational altruism—our concerns for the well-being of future generations—and support for costly climate mitigation policies. In this study, we present a novel approach to measuring intergenerational altruism through an intergenerational dilemma, where participants allocate resources across generations. First, we describe how intergenerational altruism depends on the temporal (social) distance between generations and demonstrate robust correlations between intergenerational altruism and support for several climate policies. Then, we leverage randomized participation in the intergenerational dilemma to show that it causally increases climate policy support, an effect we attribute to higher worries about human-induced climate change among treated subjects. An exploratory heterogeneity analysis suggests that the impact of the intergenerational dilemma is primarily driven by female and non-binary participants. In sum, this study presents both a novel measurement strategy and robust evidence of a malleable moral basis of climate policy preferences.

This study explores how rising costs of climate mitigation policies shape climate policy support differentially for the ideological left and right. To this end, we randomly manipulate the consumption costs associated with four different climate mitigation policies and study how different cost scenarios influence policy support among a sample of 1,597 Swedish adults. We find that more costly climate policies induce greater climate policy polarization, since right-leaning participants both display lower baseline support and more cost-sensitivity in their climate policy support. In addition, we demonstrate that when policy costs are (experimentally) higher, right-leaning participants express less concern about how consumption affects the climate. This pattern can be understood through the lens of motivated disbelief, which holds that people may adjust their beliefs in order to support their preferred actions. The present analysis provides novel insights as to when and how material conditions influence climate policy preferences.

The reintegration of former armed group affiliates into formal politics is a fundamental challenge for post-conflict societies. Arguably, this challenge is even more difficult in settings where ethnic discrimination is pervasive, since discrimination implies comparatively higher barriers to political reintegration for racialized ex-combatants. In this paper, we explore how ethnicity and armed group affiliation interact to shape electoral prospects. Specifically, we investigate whether participants in a conjoint experiment in Colombia discriminate between political candidates of European and African descent and whether politicians of different ethnic identities are differentially punished for ties to armed groups. We find that participants display a strong aversion toward politicians with armed group affiliations and that they discriminate against Afro-Colombian candidates. Furthermore, we demonstrate that biases are additive, in the sense that Caucasian and Afro-Colombian candidates are equally punished for associating with armed groups. Finally, we explore heterogeneous treatment effects to shed light on sources of ethnic discrimination and aversion toward former armed group affiliates.

In this study, I investigate how conflict victimization influences civilians’ likelihood of (dis)obeying armed actors, a behavioral tendency which I elicit through a lab-in-the field experiment. Violence could foster either obedience or defiance depending on whether a “fear of punishment” or a “taste for retribution” dominate. In a sample with residents in Meta, a conflict-ridden department of Colombia, I find that conflict victimization increases disobedience. Participants who were victimized during the conflict are significantly more likely than non-victimized civilians to disobey the main insurgent group, but no more likely to disobey the Colombian Armed Forces. This differential effect is attributed to more frequent civilian victimization by the insurgents. I support a causal interpretation through an Instrumental Variable approach which leverages the distance to a historic front line as an instrument for victimization. In sum, the findings show that violent targeting of civilians can inspire resistance rather than submission.

The relationship between market participation and moral values has been an object of a long-lasting debate in economics. Yet, to date little credible empirical evidence exists. In this study, we examine the relationship between market participation and moral decision-making by conducting rule-breaking experiments in 13 villages across Greenland (N=543), where stark contrasts in market participation within villages allow us to hold village-level factors constant. First, we document a robust positive association between market participation and moral behavior towards anonymous others. Second, we find that market-integrated participants display universalism in moral decision-making, whereas subsistence economy participants make more honest decisions toward co-villagers. A battery of robustness tests confirm that the behavioral differences between market and subsistence economy participants are not driven by variation in socioeconomic characteristics, childhood background, cultural identities, kinship structure, global connectedness, or exposure to religious and political institutions.

The ability of states to exercise authority often varies considerably within their borders. Yet, the empirical literature on state capacity has typically relied on country-level indicators of state capacity. In this paper, we develop a measure of local state capacity for all five-kilometer grid cells across Sub-Saharan Africa. The measure builds on geocoded survey data on local state presence, which we predict and extrapolate through a machine learning model using readily available data on the costs and benefits of capacity building across space. We showcase the usefulness of measuring state capacity at a local level by employing the index as a moderating factor in the relationship between oil wealth and violent conflict and show that areas with higher levels of state capacity face lower risks of conflict outbreak due to exogenous oil wealth shocks.

Trusting behaviour is a cornerstone of cooperation and, hence, economic performance, not least in poorer communities where economic transactions often rely on informal agreements. But trusting behaviour is potentially costly since the counterpart may decide to defect. In this study, we investigate whether food scarcity influences the level of trusting behaviour in rural Tanzania by leveraging quasi-experimental variation in food supply induced by the harvest. Through a lab-in-the-field experiment, we document that farmers display lower levels of trusting behaviour during the lean season compared to the abundant season and show that the difference is explained by variation in food scarcity.

This paper investigates how economic expectations shape voting intentions in a hypothetical independence referendum in Greenland, a self-governing region of the Kingdom of Denmark. I identify the causal effect of economic expectations by randomly exposing respondents to a prime informing on Greenland’s current fiscal deficit. Respondents exposed to the information are 43% more likely to oppose independence, an effect I attribute to (a) worsened economic expectations and (b) greater political participation among pessimistic respondents. I further document that the impact of the prime depends on respondents' personal ties to the political union. While information exposure substantially increases opposition to independence among voters with strong ties to Denmark, voting intentions are essentially unchanged for respondents with weak ties to Denmark. Still, instrumental motives shape preferences for a sufficiently large proportion of voters for the information prime to alter the outcome of the independence referendum.

Cooperation is essential to reap efficiency gains from specialization, not least in poor communities where economic transactions are often informal. Yet, cooperation might be more difficult to sustain under scarcity, since defecting from a cooperative equilibrium can yield safe, short-run benefits. In this study, we investigate how scarcity affects cooperation by leveraging exogenous variation in economic conditions induced by the Msimu harvest in rural Tanzania. We document significant changes in food consumption between the pre- and post-harvest period, and show that lean season scarcity reduces socially efficient but personally risky investment in a framed investment game. This can contribute to what is commonly referred to as a behavioral poverty trap.