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Economics of National Security

Paper Session

Saturday, Jan. 6, 2024 10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (CST)

Convention Center, 223
Hosted By: Economics of National Security Association
  • Chair: Eli Berman, University of California-San Diego

Public Response to Government Alerts Saves Lives During Russian Invasion of Ukraine

David Van Dijcke
,
University of Michigan
Austin L. Wright
,
University of Chicago
Mark Polyak
,
Ipsos

Abstract

War is the cause of tremendous human suffering. To reduce such
harm, governments have developed tools to alert civilians of imminent
threats. Whether these systems are effective remains largely
unknown. We study the introduction of an innovative smartphone
application that notifies civilians of impending military operations
developed in coordination with the Ukrainian government after the
Russian invasion. We leverage quasi-experimental variation in the
timing of more than 3,000 alerts to study civilian sheltering behavior,
using high-frequency geolocation pings tied to 17 million mobile
devices, 60% of the connected population in Ukraine. We find that,
overall, civilians respond sharply to alerts, quickly seeking shelter.
These rapid post-alert changes in population movement attenuate
over time, however, in a manner that cannot be explained by adaptive
sheltering behavior or calibration to the signal quality of alerts.
Responsiveness is weakest when civilians have been living under
an extended state of emergency, consistent with the presence of an
alert fatigue effect. Our results suggest 35-45% of observed civilian
casualties were avoided because of public responsiveness to the messaging
system. Importantly, an additional 8-15% of civilian casualties
observed during the later periods of the conflict could have been
avoided with sustained public responsiveness to government alerts.
We provide evidence that increasing civilians’ risk salience through
targeted government messaging can increase responsiveness, suggesting
a potential policy lever for sustaining public engagement
during prolonged episodes of conflict.

Economic Sanctions and Informal Employment

Ali Moghaddasi Kelishomi
,
Loughborough University
Roberto Nistico
,
University of Naples Federico II

Abstract

This paper examines how trade sanctions affect the allocation of workers across formal and informal employment. We analyse the case of the unexpected and unprecedented trade sanctions imposed on Iran in 2012. We use a difference-in-differences approach and compare the probability of working in the informal sector before and after 2012 for individuals employed in industries with pre-existing different levels of exposure to international trade. Combining employment data from the Iranian Labour Force Survey and trade data from Iran’s Customs Administration database for the years 2008–14, we find that workers employed in industries initially facing higher exposure to trade are significantly more likely to experience informal employment in the years after 2012 than workers employed in industries with lower trade exposure. This result suggests that, in the short run, the informal sector may absorb a significant fraction of workers displaced by the trade shock caused by the sanctions. We estimate that the increase in informal employment is highest for poorly educated workers, highlighting the unequal labour market consequences of trade sanctions. We exclude that industries differentially exposed to international trade were already following a different trend in the share of informal employment in the years prior to 2012, thus providing empirical support for the validity of our identification strategy. Moreover, we show that our main result holds when accounting for potential sorting issues by an instrumental variable approach. Our findings shed light on a potentially important dimension of labour reallocation whereby trade sanctions can affect the economy of the target country. They also provide important implications for policies designed to address informal employment and to assist trade-displaced workers.

Terrorism and Voting: The Rise of Right-Wing Populism in Germany

Navid Sabet
,
Goethe University Frankfurt
Marius Liebald
,
Goethe University Frankfurt
Guido Friebel
,
Goethe University Frankfurt

Abstract

Can right-wing terrorism increase support for far-right populist parties and if so, why?
Exploiting quasi-random variation between successful and failed attacks across German
municipalities, we find that successful attacks lead to significant increases in the vote share
for the right-wing, populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party in state elections.
Investigating channels, we find that successful attacks lead to differential increases in
turnout which are mainly captured by the AfD. Using the German SOEP, a longitudinal
panel of individuals, we investigate terror’s impact on individual political attitudes. We
first document that people residing in municipalities that experience successful or failed
attacks are indistinguishable. We then show that successful terror leads individuals to
prefer the AfD, adopt more populist attitudes and report significantly greater political
participation at the local level. These results display important heterogeneities: individuals
without prior partisan commitments, without prior history of political participation and with
less education prefer the AfD differentially more in response to successful terror. Terror
also leads voters to migrate away from (some) mainstream parties to the AfD.We also find
evidence of biased media reporting: successful attacks receive more media coverage among
local and regional publishers, coverage which makes significantly more use of words related
to Islam and terror. These results hold despite the fact that most attacks are motivated by
right-wing causes and targeted against migrants. The AfD responds to attacks by speaking
more about crime and integration in its election manifestos at the state level. Other parties
do not shift their language or shift in the opposite direction.
JEL Classifications
  • H5 - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies
  • F5 - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy