The next Economics Seminar of Paris-Saclay will be held on Thursday, May 16th, from 12:15 to 13:15, in room A5.
Tanguy Le Fur (University of Lille) will present his article “The Multiplier Effect of Resource Conflicts: The Great Divergence and Reconvergence through the Lens of Unified Growth Theory,” co-authored with Etienne Wasmer.
Abstract: This paper interprets the Great Divergence as the cumulative influence of small asymmetries in technology or various initial conditions, amplified through conflict over resources. It introduces a tractable framework that integrates demography, technological progress, and conflict in a long-run growth model. The amplification effect of resources appropriation is characterized by conflict multipliers in both the short- and the long-run. Conflict is a source of substantial divergence as the appropriation of resources allows some countries to develop faster at the expense of others. Reconvergence is, however, possible through population growth due to strategic complementarities in fertility decisions and staggered demographic transitions. Rich and non-linear dynamics display key features of comparative economic development between the West and the Global South, but also shed light on a variety of historical case studies that share such dynamics of divergence and reconvergence as well as more dramatic episodes of population extinction in a dominated country. Our framework can easily be extended to study the role of resources exhaustion or the fundamental trade-off between trade and conflict.
Link to the seminar web page: https://sites.google.com/view/sem-econ-saclay/home