Working Papers

“To Each Their Own Price: Pricing Discretion and Relational Work in Syrian Hawala”

How do price-setters use discretion in opaque markets? And what are the distributional effects of discretionary pricing? I examine these questions in Syrian hawala, an unlicensed money transfer market, drawing on ethnographic evidence from 18 months of fieldwork, 112 interviews, and an original audit study of transfer prices. I argue that price-setters use discretion as a form of relational work to affirm and distinguish the moral significance of their ties with different customers. Further, relational pricing extends beyond personalized exchange, crystalizing into “pricing scripts”–normative principles that shape discretionary pricing even in anonymous exchange. Qualitative data reveal that brokers customize prices for refugees based on an altruistic principle of “to each their own price,” while they standardize prices for NGOs based on a fair treatment principle of “the best market price.” Experimental evidence then shows how these moralized scripts shape anonymous transactions: I find that prices for refugees are not only more variable but also, on average, 29% higher than those offered to NGOs. Finally, I trace this price disparity to professional brokers, who offer NGOs a consistent discount in exchange for the legitimacy they confer on their gray-status trade. The study sheds light on the relational underpinnings of discretion, morality, and inequality in opaque markets.

“Rating Prestige: Status Competitions and Creditworthiness on the Global Stage”

States often invest considerable resources in status competitions whereby they seek to enhance their reputations vis-à-vis peers. But to what extent do these status displays resonate with key global audiences and yield material advantages? To examine this question I study two prominent cases of status displays – bidding to host the Olympic Games and holding a temporary seat on the UN Security Council – and analyze their relationship with upgrades in sovereign credit ratings. I find that in both cases performing states are ten percent more likely to receive a rating upgrade within the next two years. Moreover, I find that smaller states and emerging economies that exceed expectations benefit disproportionately from these status displays. To explain these patterns, I analyze press releases issued by rating agencies, and propose that status displays improve their assessments of countries’ creditworthiness because they are evaluated as signals of commitment to international norms and obligations.

“Trust on the Move: Wartime Migration and Informal Exchange Networks”

How do trust networks scale up while continuing to be effective in enforcing commitments? This paper answers this question by examining the wartime expansion of hawala informal money transfer networks over the course of Syria’s war. Despite being based on interpersonal trust relationships between participant brokers, hawala networks have effectively met the tremendous demand for money transfers in the form of remittances, aid, and trade finance, among others. Drawing on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with Syrian brokers in Lebanon and Turkey, I reconstruct two network narratives to explain hawala’s remarkable scope and effectiveness. I argue that wartime migration helps create these pervasive, dispersed, and reliable hawala networks through two mechanisms: 1) the dispersion of rooted trust ties across space, and 2) the concentration of cultivated trust ties in safe-havens. Each type of trust, in turn, performs a crucial role in brokers’ ability to avoid the tradeoff between trust-based exchange and scale. Rooted trust ties, based on a shared local identity, allow for long-term debt commitments; while cultivated trust, based on a shared experience of exile and displacement, forges trans-local cooperation in safe havens and provides key bridges between otherwise disconnected networks. By knitting together these two distinct types of trust ties, brokers are able to simultaneously guarantee their mutual obligations and extend their coverage across multiple locations. In this way, rooted and cultivated trust ties help sustain the flow of money even to the most isolated and hard-to-reach locations, bring together the many disparate hawala networks, and contribute to the reliability of the system as a whole. 

“The Temporal and Spatial Structure of a Currency Black Market”

In this ongoing project, I examine what happens to sovereign money during civil wars by analyzing the spatial and temporal structure of a currency black market. The geography of conflict is often uneven and unpredictable, with political authority fragmented across territory. In the case of Syria this fragmentation led to the local proliferation of black market rates for the country’s national currency. I draw on web-scraped data from one of the most popular Facebook pages that publish daily local rates for the Syrian pound from across the country and from territories under the control of various political groups. The project will merge black-market data with data on territorial control, migration flows, and violent events to understand 1) where and why price hubs emerge in a conflict economy and 2) the drivers of price dispersion and volatility during war. I will use these findings to map and explain the distribution of risk and uncertainty in the context of a violent conflict.

Other Writing

“Mobilizing in Exile: Syrian Associational Life in Turkey and Lebanon.” Middle East Report 278, Summer 2016: 20-26 (with Killian Clarke). Online access.