09:00 | Thursday, October 15, 2020
Zoom Webinar
English
Associate Professor of Economics, Southern Methodist University
Ömer Özak and his coauthor explore the effect of historical ethnic borders on contemporary non-civil conflict in Africa. Exploiting variations across artificial regions (i.e., grids of 50x50km) within an ethnicity's historical homeland, they document that both the intensive and extensive margins of contemporary conflict are concentrated close to historical ethnic borders. Following a theory-based instrumental variable approach, which generates a plausibly exogenous ethno-spatial partition of Africa, they find that grid cells with historical ethnic borders have 27 percentage points higher probability of conflict and 7.9 percentage points higher probability of being the initial location of a conflict. In this Quantitative History Webinar, Ömer will share their findings and explain in great detail the key underlying mechanisms: competition for agricultural land, population pressure, cultural similarity and weak property rights.
Ömer's coauthor is Emilio Depetris-Chauvin (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile).
Thursday, October 15, 2020
Zoom Webinar
Ömer Özak
English
The Quantitative History (QH) Webinar Series aims to provide researchers, teachers, and students with an online intellectual platform to keep up to date with the latest research in the field, promoting the dissemination of research findings and interdisciplinary use of quantitative methods in historical research. The QH Webinar Series, now entering its fourth year, is co-organized by Centre for Quantitative History at the HKU Business School and International Society for Quantitative History in partnership with Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Series is now substantially supported by the Areas of Excellence (AoE) Scheme from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. [AoE/B-704/22-R]). 量化歷史網上講座系列由香港大學陳志武和馬馳騁教授聯合發起，旨在介紹前沿量化歷史研究成果、促進同仁交流，推廣量化方法在歷史研究中的應用。本系列講座由香港大學經管學院量化歷史研究中心和國際量化歷史學會承辦，及香港人文社會研究所全力支持。從2023年開始，系列得到中國香港特別行政區研究資助局卓越學科領域計劃的重要資助 (項目編號[AoE/B-704/22-R])。
Conveners: Professor Zhiwu Chen & Dr. Chicheng Ma (HKU Business School)
The International Society for Quantitative History (ISFQH) is an independent, not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting, supporting, and enhancing the advancement of education, in particular research and knowledge dissemination in quantitative history, in Hong Kong and other parts of the world.
