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Economics Detective Radio

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Aug 26, 2016 • 43min

Venezuela, El Caracazo, and Chavism with Francisco Toro

Today's guest is Francisco Toro, he is the blog editor at The Caracas Chronicles, a group blog about Venezuela. Venezuela has all the markings of a paradise. It has a lush, tropical climate and access to vast oil reserves. And yet, the Venezuelan government has run the country into the ground. As of now, all but the wealthiest Venezuelans struggle to eat. What went wrong? It might surprise you, given Venezuela's current state, that the country was for many years a model Latin American country. Before 1989, Venezuela had a stable, two-party democracy. Its economy functioned when the price of oil was high, and it was free of much of the violence that plagued other Latin American nations. That changed in 1989 with an event known as El Caracazo. El Caracazo refers to a series of riots that occurred in February and March of 1989, and their brutal repression by the Venezuelan army. The details surrounding El Caracazo remain deeply controversial among Venezuelans. Before 1989, the Venezuelan economy was characterized by cronyism. Many industries were protected from competition both by tariffs on foreign goods and restrictions on entry by new firms. This arrangement could continue so long as oil prices stayed high, but with the fall of oil prices in the 1980s, the economy sunk into a malaise. The government was deeply indebted, and the incoming government tried to implement neoliberal reforms to save both the economy and the government's balance sheet. Within weeks of the reforms, the riots that would become El Caracazo began. Here's where the controversy lies: Chavez and his supporters on the far left point to these riots as the people rising up against capitalism. But Venezuelans on the right point out that the reforms hadn't had time to take effect when the riots occurred, and therefore they were more likely a reaction against the ongoing economic malaise than the reforms. In any case, Caracazo marked a turning point for Venezuela that would lead to the rise of socialist president Hugo Chavez, who would control the country until his death in 2013. Chavez' brand of Marxism was a throwback to the socialist regimes of the Cold War. His Venezuela was a mixed economy with very heavy restrictions on its capitalist elements. For instance, Chavez made it illegal to fire an employee for any reason. He imposed price controls throughout the economy. When oil prices were high, they propped up the rest of the economy. When they were low, the regime could borrow to paper over critical shortages. During this time, Chavez received praise from Western intellectuals on the left. Even as late as 2013, Salon was praising Chavez' "economic miracle." In 2013, Chavez died and was succeeded by Nicolas Maduro. In 2014, the price of oil collapsed, causing Venezuela to default on its debts. The government has attempted to print its way to solvency, causing high inflation. The Chavez and Maduro regimes have kneecapped the capitalist system and replaced it with nothing. Toro argues that even Soviet-style central planning would be an improvement at this point. There are clear pragmatic reforms Maduro could make to reduce the impact of the crisis. Yet he doesn't, and members of his government who speak out in favour of market-led reforms of any kind are summarily fired. Maduro listens to the advice of a Marxist economist named Alfredo Serrano, who is a mix between a hard-core Stalinist and a utopian campus liberal. Yet despite the continually worsening economy, Maduro holds on to power. He also maintains the support of about a third of the population. Maduro's regime has managed to place the blame for the crisis on sabotage by a nefarious capitalist conspiracy. Businesses that hold inventory for any length of time are at risk of having their warehouses raided and filmed as proof that the ongoing shortages are the work of capitalists hoarding goods. Maduro also scapegoats the many people who earn their livings re-selling price-controlled goods, a group that now encompasses one in six Venezuelans. As dubious as these claims are, the government controls the media and seems to have convinced a third of the population of this narrative.
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Aug 17, 2016 • 52min

Against Fossil Fuel Divestment with Pierre Desrochers

Pierre Desrochers returns to the podcast to discuss the fossil fuel divestment movement in higher education. He recently co-authored a paper titled "Blowing Hot Air on the Wrong Target? A Critique of the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement in Higher Education" with Hiroko Shimizu. The fossil fuel divestment movement seeks to combat the environmental damage done by the fossil fuel industry by preventing university endowments from investing in fossil fuel stocks. More than 1,000 universities have divested themselves of fossil fuel stocks because of this movement's influence. There are a number of problems with this approach: 1. University endowments can't budge stock prices unilaterally. University endowments are small potatoes in the world economy. Even if they could affect the stock prices of oil companies, they would just create an arbitrage opportunity for other investors to buy those stocks at discounted prices. This more than anything makes divestment an exercise in futility. Camerer (1998) tried to influence prices in a horse betting market by placing large bets and then pulling them out at the last minute. He found that he was unable to budge prices even little. Divestment activists are trying to do what Camerer was trying to do, and they won't have any more success. Some activists have internalized this criticism, and instead argue that divestment is important for symbolic moral reasons. 2. Universities will face higher risk if they choose to divest. If university endowments divest themselves of fossil fuel stocks, they will be less diversified. Having a wide range of different (and uncorrelated) stocks allows a university endowment to hedge itself against risk. Since oil stocks haven't given particularly high returns in recent years, activists have been able to argue that divestment makes sense from an investment perspective. But you can't predict future returns based on past ones. The prices of these stocks reflect the expected value investors place on them, so to the extent that the future profitability of oil companies can be predicted, the prices already reflect those trends. Furthermore, if student activists are allowed to direct universities' investment activities, it may be difficult for universities to hire the most talented fund managers. 3. The movement is hypocritical. While activists can't affect fossil fuel production by manipulating stock prices, they could affect it by demanding less fossil fuels themselves. And yet they attend their anti-petroleum protests in kayaks made from petroleum. Activists want change without personal sacrifice. A round-trip flight from New York to Europe releases between 2 and 3 tons of carbon into the atmosphere, but few environmental activists are willing to skip their exotic vacations in favour of less carbon-intensive activities. 4. The alternatives to fossil fuels are not so great. There's a lot of focus on solar and wind power as replacements for fossil fuels. But an electrical grid needs to work even when it is neither windy nor sunny, and storing power is costly. You need other sources of power to take up the slack when wind and solar can't deliver. In a misguided attempt to appease environmentalists, Germany shut down many of its nuclear plants to replace them with wind and solar power plants. In order to keep consistent power, Germany has had to burn coal. But what would they do if they couldn't use coal to produce power when the sun and wind aren't working? The UK's solution has been to burn wood pellets, which is arguably worse than petroleum for producing power. An advantage of fossil fuels is that humans have been able to substitute them for energy that would have, in the past, been produced on the surface of the Earth. The more we extract from underground, the less of the Earth's surface needs to be dedicated to producing for humans. Indeed, global forestation has been increasing, not decreasing, over the past few decades. 5. The global transportation system depends on fossil fuels. Fossil fuels offer a highly concentrated form of energy that is vital to transportation. While electric cars have made great advances in recent years, even the best can't travel nearly as far as a gas-burning car with a full tank. Electric cars are also prohibitively expensive for most people, and must be subsidized to compete with cheaper-to-produce gas-powered cars. And of course, we drive around on asphalt, which is itself a petroleum product. The advantage of having a well-functioning global transportation system powered by fossil fuels is that it allows regions to specialize in what they're good at producing. Pierre's book, The Locavore's Dilemma, deals with issues of food security. If you can produce tomatoes in fertile Mexico and ship them to frigid Canada, you don't have to expend the energy of building and heating greenhouses in places where tomatoes wouldn't grow naturally. Works Cited Camerer, C. F. (1998). Can asset markets be manipulated? A field experiment with racetrack betting. Journal of Political Economy, 106(3), 457-482. Desrochers, P., & Shimizu, H. (2012). The locavore's dilemma: in praise of the 10,000-mile diet. PublicAffairs. Desrochers, P., & Shimizu, H. (2016). Blowing hot air on the wrong target? A critique of the fossil fuel divestment movement in higher education. Frontier Centre in Public Policy.
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Jul 22, 2016 • 55min

The Costs of Ethnic Diversity with Garett Jones

Garett Jones returns to the podcast to discuss the issue of ethnic diversity. There is a wide body of research showing that ethnic diversity can reduce the productivity of teams, firms, and even whole countries. Williams and O'Reilly (1996) review dozens of studies showing that ethnic diversity has a negative impact on group performance. In the two decades since, more research has reinforced that result. Alesina and La Ferrara (2005) find that increasing ethnic diversity from 0 (only one ethnic group) to 1 (each individual is a different ethnicity) would reduce a country's annual growth by 2 percent. Multiple studies (La Porta et al., 1999; Alesina et al., 2003; Habyarimana et al., 2007) have shown that ethnic diversity negatively affects public good provision. Stazyk et al. (2012) find that ethnic diversity reduces job satisfaction among government workers. Parrotta et al. (2014a) find that ethnic diversity is significantly and negatively correlated with firm productivity. This may seem strange to you. If you're like me, you probably enjoy diversity. You probably don't observe the problems of low morale and high marginal costs that researchers have found in ethnically diverse workplaces. If that's the case then you, like me, live in a bubble. An apparent exception to the rule that ethnic diversity lowers productivity comes in high-human-capital groups. I say "apparent" because there hasn't been much in the way of direct study of this particular issue. However, some results are suggestive. For instance, the same researchers who found that ethnic diversity reduces firm productivity in general found that it increases firms' level of innovation as measured by patents (Parrotta et al., 2014b). Most of the people I know fall into this category of highly skilled, highly educated individuals, so it shouldn't be surprising that my experience (and maybe yours) is not the norm. Given that diversity is so costly for organizations, there is a huge industry dedicated to diversity training to mitigate these effects. However, a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review argues that diversity training seems to be a general failure. To the extent that diversity is a plus for firm profitability, firms will tend to seize this opportunity without the need for legal intervention. And indeed, there are some types of diversity that seem to have positive impacts on firm profit. For instance, a recent study by Alesina, Harnoss, and Rapoport (2016) indicates that birthplace diversity improves productivity. This is different from (and in this sample, uncorrelated with) ethnic diversity. People might all share the same ethnicity, but the evidence indicates that if they come from different places they tend to have complimentary skills that make them better at working together. As Garett points out, this is roughly the plot of every movie and TV show ever made by Joss Whedon. The causes of all these effects have been studied by experimental economists. (For an overview of the history of experimental economics, listen to my interview with Erik Kimbrough.) One way to test this is to look at how ethnically diverse groups play various games. In a study looking at the different ethnicities in Israel, Fershtman and Gneezy (2001) found that people did not discriminate against Sephardic Jews in the dictator game but they did discriminate in the trust game, indicating that discrimination was driven by a (mistaken) lack of trust in the minority ethnicity. Surprisingly, even members of the minority tended to discriminate in this way. Glaeser et al. (2000) found that pairs are less trustworthy when they have different ethnicities or nationalities. The really shocking thing about this is that this study was performed on Harvard undergraduates, who we might think of as the people least likely to discriminate in this way. Easterly, Ritzen, and Woolcock (2006) show that ethnolinguistic fractionalization has a negative impact on the rule of law: The basic story that Easterly, Ritzen, and Woolcock tell is that ethnic conflict makes it difficult to achieve a consensus on how the government should be run, thus leading to worse government. Works Cited Alesina, A., Devleeschauwer, A., Easterly, W., Kurlat, S., & Wacziarg, R. (2003). Fractionalization. Journal of Economic growth, 8(2), 155-194. Alesina, A., & Ferrara, E. L. (2005). Ethnic diversity and economic performance. Journal of economic literature, 43(3), 762-800. Alesina, A., Harnoss, J., & Rapoport, H. (2016). Birthplace diversity and economic prosperity. Journal of Economic Growth, 21(2), 101-138. Easterly, W., Ritzen, J., & Woolcock, M. (2006). Social cohesion, institutions, and growth. Economics & Politics, 18(2), 103-120. Fershtman, C., & Gneezy, U. (2001). Discrimination in a segmented society: An experimental approach. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 351-377. Glaeser, E. L., Laibson, D. I., Scheinkman, J. A., & Soutter, C. L. (2000). Measuring trust. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 811-846. Habyarimana, J., Humphreys, M., Posner, D. N., & Weinstein, J. M. (2007). Why does ethnic diversity undermine public goods provision?. American Political Science Review, 101(04), 709-725. La Porta, R., Lopez-de-Silanes, F., Shleifer, A., & Vishny, R. (1999). The quality of government. Journal of Law, Economics, and organization, 15(1), 222-279. Parrotta, P., Pozzoli, D., & Pytlikova, M. (2014a). Labor diversity and firm productivity. European Economic Review, 66, 144-179. Parrotta, P., Pozzoli, D., & Pytlikova, M. (2014b). The nexus between labor diversity and firm’s innovation. Journal of Population Economics, 27(2), 303-364. Stazyk, E. C., Davis, R., & Liang, J. (2012). Examining the Links between Workforce Diversity, Organizational Goal Clarity, and Job Satisfaction. In APSA 2012 Annual Meeting Paper. Williams, K. Y., & O’Reilly III, C. A. (1998). A review of 40 years of research. Res Organ Behav, 20, 77-140. Other Links: Pseudoerasmus on Hive Mind. Sam Bowman on Brexit. Tyler Cowen on backlash against immigration. Slate on the original "welfare queen." A smart solution to the diversity dilemma.
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Jun 26, 2016 • 44min

Brexit, The European Union, and the European Economic Area with Sam Bowman

Two days ago, Britain voted to leave the European Union (EU). The "leave" option won with 52 percent of the vote, leaving elites and the media frustrated with voters for choosing what they perceive to be the "wrong" option. My guest today to discuss Brexit is Sam Bowman, Executive Director of the Adam Smith Institute. The EU can be thought of as three things: A trade union known as the European Economic Area (or EEA), a currency union (the Euro) which Britain was never a part of, and a central regulatory body. The EU has been around in one form or another since the 1950s. Although its primary function was always to facilitate trade among European states, its ultimate goal was to prevent Europe from falling back into the brutal wars that had consumed it during the first half of the twentieth century. The Union brought freedom of movement for goods and services and for people across member states. This freedom of migration only became controversial after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Many poorer states in Eastern Europe joined the EU in the 1990s, creating the opportunity for large numbers of economic migrants to enter the wealthier states of Western Europe (a good thing, from my perspective!). Opposition to open migration was one motivating factor for some in the Leave campaign, but it wasn't the only factor. Many older Brits who voted to leave did so out of a desire for national sovereignty. The most important legislative body in the EU is the European Commission, the members of which are appointed by the various states. There's a democratically elected European Parliament, but it is less influential than the Commission, having only the power to approve or reject proposals by the Commission. The members of the Commission are appointed to specific roles. So, for instance, a Slovenian is in charge of transport policy for the entire EU, a Lithuanian is in charge of health and food safety, and a Portuguese politician is in charge of research, science, and innovation. Many in the Leave camp resented having British policy set by unelected politicians from other countries. What's next for the UK? While the Leave campaign may have won the referendum, they don't control policy going forward. The only thing that must occur is for Britain to exit the EU. It doesn't have to adopt any other of the Leave campaign's policy goals. Sam argues that the best option for the UK would be to stay in the European Economic Area (EEA) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). This EEA option would maintain the economic benefits of free trade with the EU. This would place Britain in a similar position to Norway and Iceland, which both chose not to become EU member states while participating in the EEA. Britain could also aim for a trade agreement that is tailored to its particular needs, like that of Switzerland. Brexit puts the EU in a bit of a bind. If they work out a favourable deal with Britain, other states might try to leave once they observe how painless it is. But if the EU adopts a punitive stance towards the UK it could send a bad signal to the other states. Just how voluntary is this club if you're punished for quitting? Additional Links: Sam Bowman on Twitter. More details about the institutions of the European Union.
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Jun 14, 2016 • 1h 6min

The Age of Em, Whole Brain Emulation, and Humanity's Future with Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson discusses the possibility of emulating human brains in his book 'The Age of Em'. He explores the challenges of creating emulations, economic implications of artificial intelligence, and societal shifts in an emulated world. Topics include scanning and emulating brains, retirement concepts, gender imbalances, and motivation in an em society.
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Apr 20, 2016 • 1h 1min

Drugs, Prohibition, and the Suburban Overdose Crisis with Mark Thornton

Mark Thornton is a Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute. He is the author of many books, including The Economics of Prohibition (which you can access for free here), which is also the topic of this episode. 1. Does drug prohibition help stop poverty and homelessness? The conventional wisdom on drugs is simple: you see drugs and drug abuse mixed with poverty and homelessness and it makes intuitive sense that drugs play a role in causing poverty. It seems to follow that by criminalizing drugs, you can take them out of the equation and help solve the other problems. Mark disputes this conventional wisdom. First, the causation doesn't necessarily go from drugs to poverty. Poverty can cause people to abuse drugs and mental illness can cause both self-medication and poverty. Second, if you legalize drugs, they won't be sold on the street. Instead, they'll be sold by legitimate businesses with a particular interest in maintaining their reputation and not harming their customers. Prohibition is what creates the black market, which in turn generates violence, crime, and more potent and dangerous drugs, all of which exacerbate poverty. You can't clean up the social problems related to drugs by criminalizing them when criminalizing them is what caused many of those problems. 2. The Suburban Heroin Epidemic Mark recently authored an article called The Legalization Cure for the Heroin Epidemic. In the article, he calls attention to the rising number of overdose deaths in the United States: The number of drug overdoses in the US is approaching 50,000 per year. Of that number nearly 20,000 are attributed to legal pain killers, such as Oxycontin. More than 10,000 die of heroin overdoses. I believe these figures vastly underestimate the number of deaths that are related to prescription drug use. The face of drug abuse has changed in recent decades. Rather than the homeless junkie we might picture when we think of addiction, the new addicts are middle-class people who have been over-prescribed legal opiates like such as Oxycontin and Vicodin. Doctors have been routinely prescribing these addictive opiates and many people turn to the black market rather than going cold turkey when their prescriptions expire. The problem is that Oxycontin and Vicodin are very expensive on the black market, so many of these unintentional addicts turn to heroin as a cheaper substitute. The problem with buying black market heroin is that you don't know what you're getting. Different addicts need different doses, and you don't know what kind of dose you're getting and what it's been cut with. All it takes is one particularly strong dose to cause an accidental overdose. 3. American Foreign Policy and the Supply of Opiates Afghanistan is the largest grower of illicit opium, and the supply has greatly increased since its invasion in 2001. The invasion destroyed the country's legitimate economy and many farmers turned to opium production. Being a huge and basically lawless country with a perfect climate for growing poppies, the global supply of opium exploded. 4. Political Lies to Support Drug Prohibition Mark discusses the political circumstances around the prohibition of marijuana in the United States. Marijuana prohibition went national with the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. It too quickly changed from a measure to tax and regulate into an outright prohibition. Even hemp, the non-intoxicating form of cannabis was banned! When propaganda claiming that marijuana was deadly and caused insanity, violence, and criminal behavior was debunked (aka Reefer Madness), the "gateway theory" was born to fill the void. The gateway theory posits that while marijuana might not be addictive or dangerous, it would lead the user to try the hard drugs, such as heroin. This theory became the prevailing view in the second half of the twentieth century. Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger made up this gateway theory on the spot when arguing for the prohibition of marijuana. Unfortunately, the argument stuck. Recently, a quote by John Ehrlichman, Richard Nixon's domestic policy advisor (and Watergate co-conspirator) has resurfaced on the internet: "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." This quote shows how drug prohibition has long be complicit with the politics of bigotry. 5. Progress Against the War on Drugs Despite the sordid history of drug prohibition in the twentieth century, we've made slow progress towards a sane drug policy. Marijuana's many health benefits cannot be denied, and legislators are starting to take notice. Medical marijuana has been legalized in many places, and some places have even legalized it for recreational use. Meanwhile, some jurisdictions have switched from treating drugs as a criminal issue to treating them as a medical issue. Portugal legalized all drugs in 2001. Some police chiefs have even unilaterally changed course in how they deal with addicts, offering help rather than incarceration. We can only hope that complete legalization is just around the corner.
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Feb 14, 2016 • 52min

Rome's Economic Suicide with Lawrence Reed and Marc Hyden

Lawrence Reed and Marc Hyden discuss Rome's economic decline before barbarian invasions, highlighting political violence normalization, free food/entertainment for masses, and debasement of currency leading to Rome's downfall.
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Dec 11, 2015 • 0sec

Hive Mind, IQ, and the Wealth of Nations with Garett Jones

Garett Jones, an Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University and author of "Hive Mind," dives into the surprising impact of national IQ on economic prosperity. He explores how high-IQ societies tend to be wealthier due to smarter individuals being more patient and cooperative. The conversation touches on the O-ring theory, illustrating how small errors can lead to significant economic consequences. Jones also discusses the dynamics of low-skilled migration, emphasizing the importance of human capital for both migrants and local workers.
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Oct 30, 2015 • 0sec

Icelandic Sovereign Money with Ash Navabi

Ash Navabi returns to the podcast to discuss his essay, "Will Iceland's Sovereign Money Proposal End Economic Crises?" In April of 2015, Frosti Sigurjonsson, Member of the Parliament of Iceland and Chairman of the Committee for Economic Affairs and Trade, made a bold proposal to end fractional reserve banking and replace it with a system he calls "sovereign money." Fractional reserve banking is the system under which banks create money by lending out a portion of depositors' money, keeping only a fraction to pay out on demand. One problem with fractional reserve banking is that the mismatch between banks' assets and liabilities leaves them exposed to bank runs and financial panics. To solve this problem, the central banks of the world function as "lenders of last resort" to save insolvent banks from going under. However, the more insidious problem with fractional reserves is that the injection of new money directly into credit markets artificially lowers interest rates and incentivizes entrepreneurs to take on longer term projects than the real savings available in the economy can sustain. Having central banks intervene to keep the cheap credit flowing does nothing to address this problem, and in fact makes it worse. Under the Icelandic proposal, while there would be a 100% reserve requirement for private banks, the central bank would still be able to create money at will. Ash critiques this on the basis of the "Cantillon effect." The Cantillon effect is the phenomenon whereby the creation of new money transfers wealth to the early holders of that money. If a new dollar is created, the first holder of the dollar can use it to buy goods before prices have adjusted upwards. However, as people exchange the new dollar and use it to bid on various goods, the sellers of those goods will adjust their prices upwards to account for their consumers' greater willingness to pay. If you are the last to get hold of the new dollar, then you've been bidding against the holders of new money for a long time before seeing an increase in your income, thus making you poorer in real terms. By centralizing money creation in the central bank, Sigurjonsson's proposal would enrich those to whom the central bank lends. In particular, the proposal would allow the central bank to grant money directly to the government to pay for government spending. Thus, the Cantillon effect would enrich those who are paid directly by the government at expense of those who aren't. Ash argues that this would invite cronyism, since those with the right connections will be able to benefit from these Cantillon effects. In the end, it's not clear whether the sovereign money proposal would have been a net good or a net bad. It could have reduced credit expansion, but the cronyism inherent in the proposal could easily outweigh the positive effects.
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Oct 16, 2015 • 0sec

Violence, Lynchings, Civil War, and Witch Trials with Cornelius Christian

Cornelius Christian is an Assistant Professor of Economics at St. Francis Xavier University. His research concerns development economics, economic history, and the economics of conflict and violence, which is the topic of this episode of Economics Detective Radio. Cornelius' paper "Lynchings, Labour, and Cotton in the US South" deals with violence against black people in the post-reconstruction South. Historians have hypothesized that there was an economic motive to lynchings, noting that more of them occurred when cotton prices were low. Black and white workers competed with one another in the agricultural labour market. Cornelius' findings indicate that lynchings were used by white labourers to scare black workers out of the labour market, thus raising their own wages. He finds that lynchings happen in the wake of economic shocks when agricultural wages are low. He also finds that, when lynchings occur in a given area, black people tend to migrate out of the area and agricultural wages rise for the remaining white workers. In "Economic shocks and unrest in French West Africa," Cornelius and his coauthor James Fenske show that, while economic shocks matter as a cause of civil unrest, the institutional context matters. During French West Africa's colonial era, there were oppressive poll taxes that had to be paid regardless of crop yields. When negative economic shocks occurred, either because of low world prices for agricultural goods or poor rainfall, farmers were not able to pay these taxes and engaged in riots and political violence. In the post-colonial era, the poll taxes no longer exist and political violence no longer follows negative economic shocks. Cornelius references recent research linking droughts during the Mexican Revolution to insurgency in particular areas. Areas that had particularly bad droughts during the Mexican Revolution produced larger uprisings, and that in turn affected the political and economic fates of these areas up to the present day. He also references

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