Exploring Network Externalities in Hawala Exchanges: Trust, Terrorism, and Economic Implications
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Presentation Transcript
Network Externalities in Hawala Exchanges Anamaria Berea Department for Computational Social Science Center for Social Complexity at Krasnow Institute for Advanced Studies George Mason University
Introduction • What is hawala? – exchange mechanism self-enforced by trust and reputation • Similar to Western Union • Mostly associated with certain foreign remittances • No data - social network analysis • Kuran, 2004: specific informal Islamic institutions lead to lock-in situations • Other business associated with the money transfer practice
Purpose of this research • A methodological proposal on the empirical observations • Common-pooling SNA techniques with nested game theory • Not-empirically exhaustive, but empirical dataset mapping
Method of Analysis 1. Building the datasets by proxies and informational conjectures: - proxy: the Pakistani players in major international business (hawaladars network; Pakistan vs. Afghanistan) - proxy: the pool of countries under scrutiny for remittances by Interpol and UN frozen assets - 3 files: personal ties, business ties and locations (mini-clusters)
Method of Analysis 2. Analyzing the datasets: - nested game hypothesis (Tsebelis, 1991) – correlation matrix - shows the network externalities
Discussion • Network externalities: drugs, gold, Dubai and Mumbai • Lock-in emergence: terrorism in NWFP • High Centrality Measures for ObL, Dawood Ibrahim and TTP • This method of analysis by proxies and game theory validates conceptual and theoretical publications
Thank you! • Questions?