TY - JOUR
T1 - More legislation, more violence? The impact of Dodd-Frank in the DRC
AU - Stoop, Nik
AU - Verpoorten, Marijke
AU - van der Windt, Peter
N1 - Funding Information:
Nik Stoop acknowledges financial support through a Ph.D. scholarship received from Research Foundation Flanders (grant number: 11Q2816N; website: http://www.fwo.be). Marijke Verpoorten acknowledges financial support from Research Foundation Flanders (grant numbers: 1517614N and 30784531; website: http://www. fwo.be). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. We thank Dominic Parker and Bryan Vadheim for sharing their data and codes. We further thank Dominic Parker and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions. We are grateful to the International Peace Information Service for sharing their data.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Stoop et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2018/8
Y1 - 2018/8
N2 - The Dodd Frank Act was passed by the US Congress in July 2010 and included a provision—Section 1502—that aimed to break the link between conflict and minerals in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. To date there is only one rigorous quantitative analysis that investigates the impact of Dodd-Frank on local conflict events. Looking at the short-term impact (2011–2012), it finds that the policy backfired. This study builds on a larger, more representative, dataset of mining sites and extends the time horizon by three years (2013–2015). The results indicate that the policy also backfired in the longer run, especially in areas home to gold mines. For territories with the average number of gold mines, the introduction of Dodd-Frank increased the incidence of battles with 44%; looting with 51% and violence against civilians with 28%, compared to pre-Dodd Frank averages. Delving deeper into the impact of the conflict minerals legislation is important, as President Trump suspended the legislation in February 2017 for a two-year period, ordering his administration to replace it with another policy.
AB - The Dodd Frank Act was passed by the US Congress in July 2010 and included a provision—Section 1502—that aimed to break the link between conflict and minerals in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. To date there is only one rigorous quantitative analysis that investigates the impact of Dodd-Frank on local conflict events. Looking at the short-term impact (2011–2012), it finds that the policy backfired. This study builds on a larger, more representative, dataset of mining sites and extends the time horizon by three years (2013–2015). The results indicate that the policy also backfired in the longer run, especially in areas home to gold mines. For territories with the average number of gold mines, the introduction of Dodd-Frank increased the incidence of battles with 44%; looting with 51% and violence against civilians with 28%, compared to pre-Dodd Frank averages. Delving deeper into the impact of the conflict minerals legislation is important, as President Trump suspended the legislation in February 2017 for a two-year period, ordering his administration to replace it with another policy.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0201783
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0201783
M3 - Article
C2 - 30092019
AN - SCOPUS:85052299721
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 13
JO - PloS one
JF - PloS one
IS - 8
M1 - e0201783
ER -