Implications of an Economic Theory of Conflict: Hindu-Muslim Violence in India

Abstract

for useful discussions, and to Steve Wilkinson for granting us access to a dataset on religious conflict. We thank Jay Dev Dubey for his able research assistance. We are grateful to five anonymous referees for their valuable comments. We particularly thank Co-Editor Jesse Shapiro, who went beyond the call of duty in his detailed reading of the manuscript, making many constructive suggestions that greatly improved both the content and the exposition. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Aspirations and Inequality

“…Such a model would extend the simple allocative exercise in this paper to a three-way allocation across consumption, productive investment, and resources spent in social conflict. This sort of theory would tie into recent empirical analyses of uneven growth and conflict in developing countries, such as Dube and Vargas (2013) and Mitra and Ray (2014).…”

“…Individuals might also use occupation, caste, religion, or geography to form their windows; see, for example, Akerlof and Kranton (2000), Munshi and Myaux (2006), Esteban and Ray (2008), and Mitra and Ray (2014). Our model can be extended to study groupbased aspirations, in which the population consists of several subgroups, or "ethnicities," and their incomes enter the aspirations formation function in different ways.…”

“…See, for example,Mitra and Ray (2014) for an empirical account of Hindu-Muslim violence in India. 7 See alsoStutzer (2004), who discussed aspirations based on own income and average income.…”

Explaining Collective Violence in Contemporary Indonesia

“…It is also the case in India, where Hindus are the traditionally privileged group and Muslims are a relatively disadvantaged group: Mitra and Ray (2013) find that an increase in Muslim well-being, proxied by Muslim per capita expenditures, leads to a large and significant increase in future Hindu-Muslim violence, while an increase in Hindu well-being has no significant effect on future conflict. They interpret this as Hindus acting as the aggressor against the downgraded group (Muslims) who are trying to catch up.…”

The Evolution of Consumption and Wealth Inequality in India: A Quantitative Assessment

“…Riots in the name of religion, in India, have been traced to underlying motives of economic domination. The work, in this area, of Ray and his associates is important (see Esteban andRay 2011, andMitra andRay 2012). The systematic ghettoization of the Muslim community in the Gujarat pogrom of 2003 is a case in point.…”