Eli Berman

Eli Berman (born 1960) is the Research Director for International Security Studies at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and since 2010 a Professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego.

Using Laurence Iannaccone's theory of strict religious clubs (see club good theory), Berman argues that successful radical religious groups, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Mahdi Army and the Taliban, excel at providing social services to their members, while simultaneously filtering out "free riders"; Previously, Berman drew other parallels between Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban: All three formed from affiliates of venerable nonviolent radical Islamic organizations, Hamas from the [Muslim Brotherhood] and the Taliban from the Jamiat-e-Ulema-Islam (JUI) in Pakistan, and Hezbollah from the clerical culture of the Shia holy cities in Iraq and Iran. All three movements arose in environments with weak local public good provision by government and responded by providing local public goods. Each developed into extremely effective insurgent organizations which produced specific local public goods (security) using violence. All three received generous subsidies from abroad, whether for geopolitical reasons, out of ideology, or in return for services. Younger members undergo some costly personal sacrifice in the case of the Taliban and Hamas (we know less about initiation of Hezbollah fighters). All three groups changed their ideologies drastically: Hamas in choosing armed conflict, the Taliban in deciding to protect Bin Laden and Hezbollah in shifting from a rebellion against Israeli occupation to an ethnic militia/political party after Israel's withdrawal from South Lebanon in 2000. There are differences: Hamas view most Palestinians as potential members, as Hezbollah regard Lebanese Shia, while the Taliban treated most Afghans as a conquered people. Yet the common elements, and especially the common puzzles, seem to justify analysis in parallel.

Berman argued that such parallels were common to other radical religious groups.

On Ultra-orthodox religious groups Berman has also done field work among ultra-orthodox religious groups in Israel. Studying full-time Yeshiva students, who Berman finds study until 40 years old on average, and whose families have 7.6 children per woman (in the mid-1990s), he concludes that "Subsidies induce dramatic reductions in labor supply and unparalleled increases in fertility." In a 2000 NBER paper, Berman describes Ultra-Orthodox Jews as "a fascinating and fast-growing sect which has held virtual veto power over [Israeli] public policy for more than two decades."

On the relationship between unemployment and insurgency Berman's NBER paper Do Working Men Rebel?, co-authored with Joseph Felter and Jacob N. Shapiro, drew the counterintuitive conclusion that reducing unemployment does not reduce insurgency-related violence. In an interview, Berman explains the findings as "insurgencies are very small organizations which need very few fighters to keep them going, and are often not constrained by a lack of recruits—and even if they were there's nothing to stop young men from working by day and planting roadside bombs by night." In 1981, Berman became an Israeli citizen, saying that he had "thought the Jewish experience would be more interesting in Israel". his adviser was Zvi Griliches. After graduation from Harvard, Berman became an assistant professor at Boston University. He moved to UCSD in 2003.

Selected publications

Radical, Religious and Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism (MIT Press 2009),

"Religious Extremism: the good, the bad and the deadly," (with Laurence R. Iannaccone), Public Choice, 128(1–2), 109–129, (2006). "Is Skill-Biased Technological Change Here Yet: Evidence from Indian Manufacturing in the 1990s," Annales d'Economie et de Statistique 79/80, 2006. "Language-Skill Complementarity: Estimated Returns to Immigrant Language Acquisition," (with Kevin Lang and Erez Siniver), Labour Economics, 10 (3), (June 2003) 265–290. "Environmental Regulation and Productivity: Evidence from Oil Refineries," (with Linda Bui), Review of Economics and Statistics, August 2001. "Environmental Regulation and Labor Demand: Evidence from the South Coast Air Basin," (with Linda Bui), Journal of Public Economics, February 2001.