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GUNS, PARASITES, AND STATES: THREE
ESSAYS ON COMPARATIVE DEVELOPMENT
AND POLITICAL ECONOMY
BY
EMILIO DEPETRIS CHAUVIN
B.A., UNIVERSIDAD DE BUENOS AIRES, 2003
M.A., BROWN UNIVERSITY, 2009
A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
IN THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS AT BROWN UNIVERSITY
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND
MAY 2014
c Copyright 2014 by Emilio Depetris Chauvin
�
To Jennifer with all my love and deepest gratitude
This dissertation by Emilio Depetris Chauvin is accepted in its present form
by the Department of Economics as satisfying the
dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Date
David Weil, Adviser
Recommended to the Graduate Council
Date
Pedro Dal B´o, Reader
Date
Stylianos Michalopoulos, Reader
Date
Brian Knight, Reader
Approved by the Graduate Council
Date
Peter Weber, Dean of the Graduate School
iii
Vita
Emilio Depetris Chauvin was born on September 3th, 1979 in Buenos Aires, Ar-
gentina. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Universidad de Buenos Aires in 2003.
He started his graduated studies in Argentina and completed all the course work for
the M.A. in Economics at Universidad de San Andr´es. Before joining Brown Univer-
sity, he worked as an economist in several think tanks and as country economist for
the World Bank in Argentina. He enrolled in Brown University’s Economics Ph.D.
program in 2008 and obtained his M.A. in Economics in 2009. While at Brown, he
was a fellow of the Initiative in Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences (S4). In
the course of his graduate school career, he was awarded a Brown Graduate School
Fellowship, the Abramson Prize for Best Third-year Research Paper, a Merit Disser-
tation Fellowship, and the Professor Borts Prize for Oustanding Ph.D. Dissertation in
Economics. He received a Ph.D. in 2014 and will continue his research and teaching
in Economics as an Assistant Professor at Universidad de los Andes in Colombia.
iv
Acknowledgements
This dissertation could not have been finished without the help and support from
many professors, colleagues, friends, and my family. I wish to o↵er my most heartfelt
thanks to all of them here.
I owe an immense debt of gratitude to my main advisor, David Weil, and my thesis
committee members, Pedro Dal Bo´, Stelios Michalopoulos, and Brian Knight. I am
particularly grateful to David. His advice, guidance, support, and mentorship during
my years at Brown were crucial for my professional development. David is not only
one of the smartest scholars I have ever met but also a great human being. I would
certainly be remiss in failing to acknowledge the key role played by Pedro in making
my journey at Brown possible. He was not only instrumental in bringing me to Brown
University but also in making me feel that my lovely Argentina was actually not that
far. With his scientific meticulousness, Pedro also taught me how to think outside
the box. Brian and Stelios had nurtured my intellectual development by generously
providing their time, invaluable comments, and unwavering guidance. I would also
like to take this opportunity to thank Oded Galor who was always willing to help. I
appreciate the fact that his o�ce door was always open whenever I needed advice.
Many thanks also go to Peter Howitt, Vernon Henderson, Ken Chay, Louis Put-
terman and Blaise Melly for comments, help, and advice in di↵erent stages of my
graduate studies. I thank Juan Carlos Hallak, Daniel Heymann, and Walter Sosa Es-
cudero for their invaluable support, help, and mentoring in the transition to my Phd
studies at Brown University. I wish to thank Boris Gershman, Alejandro Molnar, Ri-
v
cardo Perez Truglia, Leandro Gorno, Quamrul Ashraf, Raphael Franck, participants
of Macroeconomics Lunch and Macroeconomics Seminar at Brown University, semi-
nar participants at Universidad de San Andr´es, NEUDC 2013, Boston-Area Working
Group in African Political Economy at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science
(Harvard University), UNC at Chapel Hill, Notre Dame University, FGV-EPGV (Rio
de Janeiro), FGV-EESP (Sao Paulo), ITAM, and Universidad de los Andes for com-
ments and helpful discussions on the main chapter of this dissertation.
I would also like to thank my friend and fairy godmother, Angelica Vargas, who has
been supportive not only in practical matters but also emotionally since the first
day I arrived to Providence. Her kindness and hilarious sense of humor is something
that I will certainly miss. Several friends made my grad school experience a terrific
¨ ¨
ride and I thank them for their companionship and fun: Omer Ozak, Judith Gallego,
FedeDroller, FlorBorreschio, RubenDurante, MayaJudd, SarahOvermyer, Angelica
Duran, Jack Sweeney, Diego Diaz, Carla Alberti, Paco Jurado, Chaparro-Martinez
family, Martin Fiszbein, Seba Di Tella, Meche Politi, and Perez-Truglia family.
I wish to thanks my parents, Juan Manuel and Silvia, not only for their love but
also for breeding my passion for learning. I am thankful and grateful to my siblings
Nicola´s, Irene, Julia´n, Ana, and Pablo for being always there and for make me laugh.
I am happy guy and you are all indeed responsible for that! This six-years journey
would not have been such a wonderful experience without the arrival of my daughter
Violeta. This little person brought immense joy and fulfillment to my life. Violeta,
your smile is the most powerful force helping me to push forward!
I dedicate this dissertation to my wife Jennifer. All the sacrifices she made along
the way to enable the pursuit of my dream are nothing else but the proof of her
unconditional love. Jennifer, I will be always deeply indebted to you. Te amo!
vi
Contents
List of Figures x
List of Tables xii
1 StateHistoryandContemporaryConflict: EvidencefromSub-Saharan
Africa 1
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Relationship with the Existing Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3 A New Index of State History at the Sub-national Level . . . . . . . . 9
1.3.1 Overview of the Construction Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.4 Empirical Relationship between State History and Contemporary Con-
flict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.4.1 Sources and Description of Conflict Data . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.4.2 Cross Sectional Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.4.3 Panel Data Evidence: Weather Induced-Agricultural Produc-
tivity Shock, State History, and Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
1.5 Identifying Potential Mechanisms at Work: State History and Atti-
tudes Towards State Institutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
1.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Appendix 1.A: Variable Definitions 75
vii
Appendix 1.B: Construction of the Instrument 79
Appendix1.C:ConstructionofWeather-InducedProductivityShock 82
2 Malaria and Early African Development: Evidence from the Sickle
Cell Trait 92
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
2.2 Malaria and Sickle Cell Disease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
2.3 Measuring the Historical Burden of Malaria Using Data on the Sickle
Cell Trait . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
2.3.1 Measuring the Overall Burden of Malaria . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
2.3.2 Comparison of Malaria Burden to Malaria Ecology . . . . . . 111
2.3.3 Comparison of Malaria Burden to Modern Malaria Mortality
Rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
2.4 Assessing the Importance of Malaria to Early African Development . 118
2.4.1 Ethnic Group Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
2.5 Model-Based Estimates of the Economic Burden of Malaria . . . . . . 127
2.5.1 Direct E↵ect of Malaria Mortality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
2.5.2 Economic E↵ects of Malaria Morbidity . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
2.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
3 Fear of Obama: An Empirical Study of the Demand for Guns and
the U.S. 2008 Presidential Election 150
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
3.2 Data and Aggregated Empirical Evidence on Gun Sales . . . . . . . . 157
3.2.1 A Proxy of the Demand for Guns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
3.2.2 A Descriptive Analysis of the Aggregated Evolution of Gun Sales159
3.3 Empirical Strategy and Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
viii
3.3.1 Quantifying the Obama e↵ect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
3.3.2 Potential Mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
3.3.3 Robustness Check . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
3.4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Appendix 3.A: Additional Tables 198
Bibliography 202
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