What's
Inside?

Cover Story
A tale of two Oberlins.

In View
Pie-in-the-sky possibilities or difficult life-and-death decisions? The Human Genome Project may ultimately mean both.

Obies
The Oberlin Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies placed its first intern last summer. Read this firsthand account of his experiences in Moscow.

Center Piece
A new organ takes shape in Finney Chapel. Profile 6 Economist Gregory Hess and his student research assistant ponder the relationship between war, economics, and the election cycle.

Arts
Filmmaking at Oberlin? Most definitely. A three-hour marathon of student film shorts last May was just the tip of the growing celluloid iceberg.

Yeosports
Player-turned-coach Ann Marie Gilbert inspires teamwork on and off the basketball court.

The Big Picture
The Oberlin Orchestra performed at the Getty Center, L.A. under the direction of guest conductor John Williams.


Side Lines
Little facts you might be interested in.


 


Politics, Economics, and War

Professor and Student Work to Understand the Relationship
by Michael Barthel '01


What motivates U.S. political leaders to engage in war?
Gregory Hess, the Danforth-Lewis Professor of Economics, has been pondering that question for several years.

With Athanasius Orphanides of the Federal Reserve Board, Hess developed an economic theory of the political use of force that links the economy's performance, the election cycle, and the decision to engage in conflict.

Then, with a grant from the World Bank Research Group, he and two other colleagues -- S. Brock Blomberg of Wellesley College and Siddarth Thacker '99 of McKinsey & Company -- extended the earlier studies.

Their major theoretical finding concludes that if voters' preferences are influenced jointly by a leader's ability both to protect their interests and competently handle the economy, an incumbent leader with a poor economic record may initiate conflict.

"There are two reasons why politicians would do this," said Hess, who is a consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and the International Monetary Fund Institute, as well as a member of the Shadow Open Market Committee. "It could be diversionary, which is when leaders try to change the topic of discourse by starting a war. Or it could be appropriative."

Hess' work to date has been confined to international conflicts in which the U.S. has engaged in the last 100 years. He was eager to test his theory on conflicts between Native American tribes and U.S. federal or state troops, but had been unable to do so "due to the unavailability of data and my unfamiliarity with the history of the American West," he said. He found a willing -- and knowledgeable -- research partner in Andrew Harrison '02, an economics and East Asian studies double major from Tucson, Arizona.

"I was interested in learning about how economics is actually used, and I'm also very interested in the history of the West, so it was a great fit," Harrison said.

A McGregor-Oresman grant allowed Hess to hire Harrison as a research assistant last summer. The pair focused on conflicts between 1866 and 1890 in the Plains and western states and territories.

Harrison researched and compiled a data set of annual economic indicators for the initiation and escalation of conflicts during the period. It was not easy work. Few official economic records were kept at that time, and because the U.S. economy was less integrated across regions then, much of the data had to be extrapolated from commodity prices, agricultural prices and yields, and calculations of the gross domestic product, among other sources.

Harrison also gathered political data -- such as election timeframes and the status of the territories as they became states -- and tied it to the economic and conflict data.

"The work was very frustrating," Harrison said. "I was having to piece together historical accounts from various sources that were often conflicting. Professor Hess kept encouraging me and was very positive. From him I learned to see economics working in places I had never even considered before. It's neat to see how the things I am learning in class can be used to find interesting relationships people might not ordinarily expect."

Hess agreed that it was an explorative process. "You just have to jump in, start swimming, and hope to find the shore," he said. Hess and Harrison hope to complete their study this year; they plan to apply for a grant from the MacArthur Foundation's Program for Security and Sustainability.

"Given the tremendous social and economic costs associated with conflict, a better understanding of what drives leaders to engage in conflict will allow researchers to design better institutions for limiting such conflict," Hess said.