Conflicts, Demography and the Economic Volatility in Developing Countries

Robert Messerle

oct 2011 · GRIN Verlag

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Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Economics - Economic Cycle and Growth, grade: 1,0, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät), language: English, abstract: “In cities in six West African countries I saw similar young men everywhere--hordes of them. They were like loose molecules in a very unstable social fluid, a fluid that was clearly on the verge of igniting.” (Kaplan, 1994) With his article “The Coming Anarchy” Kaplan ignited a discussion over the threat posed by youth cohorts to the civilized world. More than 15 years later there is still no clear evidence whether large populations of young men are a main factor in determining conflict risk or not. This paper now tries to connect the topic of demographically induced violence with another contemporary topic of development economics: growth volatility.