Laureates of the International Geneva Award 2012

The Academic Council of International Geneva, acting as a Jury, carefully evaluated the submitted articles according to criteria such as originality of research, strong methodology, interdisciplinary aspects and above all, immediate policy relevance for International Organisations. Three articles – among twenty submission, unanimously convinced the Jury.

Given the tight competition among the submitted articles, the Jury decided to attribute a special mention to the article “Promoting Corporate Social Responsibility in Private Banking: Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Joining the Wolfsberg Initiative Against Money Laundering” submitted by Martino Maggetti (University of Zürich).

The International Geneva Award 2012 is attributed to the authors of the following three articles:

Marc Flandreau
Graduate Institute for International
and Development Studies
Geneva

Juan Flores
Institute Paul Bairoch of Economic History
and Department of Economic Sciences
University of Geneva

RESEARCH TITLE

The Peaceful Conspiracy: Bond Markets
and International Relations During the Pax Britannica
Published in: International Organization 66, Spring 2012
pp. 211-41

Abstract

"This article provides foundations to Polanyi’s famed argument that monopoly power in the global capital market served as an instrument of peace during the Pax Britannica (1815–1914). Our perspective is novel - we focus on the role of intermediaries and certification. We show that when information and enforcement are imperfect, there is scope for the endogenous emergence of “prestigious” intermediaries who enjoy a monopoly position and as a result, control government actions. They can implement conditional lending: they subject the distribution of credit to the adoption of peaceful policies. Prestigious intermediaries act that way because of their concern with maintaining an unblemished track record when wars increased risks of default. Our analysis, which brings together insights from different disciplines, provides a significant extension to, and departure from, recent research on how countries accumulate reputational capital."

View related press article published in the magazine "Alternatives Economiques" (No 313 - May 2012).

Robert Berlin
Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture 
Basel, Switzerland

Yuri Marin 
Francisco Pérez 
Francisco Paiz
Institute of Applied Research 
and Local Development (Nitplan)
Managua, Nicaragua

RESEARCH TITLE

Factors Determining the Adoption and Impact
of a Postharvest Storage Technology
Published in: Food Security, Volume 4, Number 2 (2012) 
pp 279-293

Abstract

"This paper evaluates the determinants and impact of adopting the metal silo—a postharvest storage technology for staple grains—which was disseminated by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) from 1983 to 2003 in four Central American countries.

The aim of the SDC program was to diminish smallholder farmers’ postharvest losses by facilitating the manufacture and dissemination of metal silos and thereby to improve regional food security. Our empirical analysis is based on a unique data set obtained from a survey of 1,600 households from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. We employed a double-hurdle model to identify factors that contributed to the adoption of metal silos and used Tobit and standard regression models to assess the impact of adopting the silos on food security and well-being of households.

Our results show that both the household demand for metal silos and the impact of their adoption varied across the four countries, demonstrating the relevance of regional policies for their adoption, as well as their impact. Furthermore, our results indicate that, in addition to achieving household self-sufficiency in maize, the main determinants of adoption were household socio-economic characteristics such as age, land ownership, completion of a training course and quality of basic infrastructure. Finally, when considering a group of economic and social indicators of household well-being, we found that, compared to the silo non-adopters, the adopter households experienced a significant improvement in their food security and well-being between 2005 and 2009."

Thomas Bernauer
ETH Zürich, Center for Comparative
and International Studies, 
and Institute for Environmental Decisions

Tobias Siegfried
Hydrosolutions GmbH, Zürich

RESERACH TITLE

Climate Change and International Water Conflict
in Central Asia 

Published in: Journal of Peace Research 
January 2012 (49)1, 227 - 239

Abstract

"We engage in a critical assessment of the neo-malthusian claim that climatic changes can be an important source
of international tensions, in the extreme even militarized interstate disputes. The most likely scenario is conflict over water allocation in international catchments shared by poorer, less democratic, and politically less stable countries, governed by weak international water management institutions, and exposed to severe climatic changes.

The Syr Darya in Central Asia, which is part of the Aral Sea basin, corresponds quite well to all these characteristics.
If the neo-malthusian specter of conflict over water is empirically relevant, we should see signs of this in the Syr Darya. The riparian countries of the Aral Sea basin have experienced international disputes over water allocation ever since the USSR collapsed and, with it, existing water management institutions and funding. The worst such dispute concerns the Syr Darya, one of the two largest rivers in Central Asia. Based on hydrological data and other information we find that the only existing international water management institution in the Syr Darya has failed.

Based on a coupled climate, land-ice and rainfall- runoff model for the Syr Darya, we then examine whether, in the absence of an effective international water allocation mechanism, climate change is likely to make existing international tensions over water allocation worse. We find that climate change-induced shifts in river runoff, to which the Uzbek part of the Syr Darya catchment is particularly vulnerable, and which could contribute to a deterioration of already strained Kyrgyz–Uzbek relations, are likely to set in only in the medium to long-term. This leaves some time
for the riparian countries to set up an effective international framework for water allocation and prevention of climate-induced geohazards. By implication, our findings suggest that a climate change-induced militarized interstate dispute over water resources in Central Asia is unlikely."