Why pirates like a little law and order

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Brigands seeking harbours

OFF the coast of Somalia, piracy is flourishing. Brigands took nearly 1,200 people hostage in those waters last year. That Somalia also routinely heads global lists of failed states sounds unsurprising: anarchic conditions on land are surely directly responsible for piracy at sea.

A study presented this week at the annual meeting of Britain’s Royal Economic Society by Olaf de Groot and Anja Shortland of the German Institute for Economic Research and Matthew Rablen of Brunel University disputes this claim. Even within Somalia, the economists point out, most pirates originate from relatively stable Puntland rather than the truly anarchic south. They argue that this is no coincidence: a basic level of law and order may be necessary for pirates to ply their dangerous trade.

They reckon that this is because piracy is a “market-dependent” crime. Pirates may benefit from protection from other criminals. Selling the loot requires transport and the ability to store goods. All this requires some rule of law—but not enough to cramp bandits’ style.

If this reasoning is true, then piracy ought to increase as a country goes from a state of anarchy to having a semblance of law and order, before eventually declining when the place becomes much better governed. The academics are able to test this hypothesis using a new set of figures on global piracy, put together from reports filed by ships’ captains to the International Maritime Bureau.

The new data, which are much more comprehensive than figures put out by governments, confirm their hunch. For countries with very poor levels of governance (as measured by a commonly used World Bank index), small improvements in such things as law enforcement, stability and security lead to more piracy. Piracy can become endemic in weakly governed states but rarely takes root in ones where the state has completely collapsed. Truly well-governed countries produce few brigands.

There is a “sweet spot” for piracy: countries like Cambodia or Cameroon provide far more conducive environments for it than Haiti, Liberia and Sierra Leone, which are too dysfunctional. Helping such anarchic places to improve their governance a bit has many benefits. Cutting down on pirate attacks may not be among them.

The link:
http://www.economist.com/node/18586874

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经济学家真是有的闲

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