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The rectangularness of countries

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Re: The rectangularness of countries

#141

Post by fiatjaf »

notsureifwant wrote: post #125
fiatjaf wrote: post #32

Correlate with economic development!

There's a fair amount of research in economic history on almost exactly this topic. Two recent papers http://www.nber.org/papers/w12328.pdf and https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4s_WKe-US99LV9XVTNVNzFxYW8... have looked at how measures of the artificial-ness of borders (how straight they are, how often they cut through the territory of ethnic groups, ratio of a country's area to the area of its convex hull) are corre…

Who are these people discussing on Twitter? Are they the researchers who publish papers on the topic? (I do not mean these same papers you linked to, just asking if they are serious academics.)

Re: The rectangularness of countries

#142

Post by lagadu »

flurdy wrote: post #68
foliveira wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Including Azores definitely affected the final result. It's weird that other countries didn't have their islands include though

Others are also affected by islands and territories, see France with French Guyana etc, Norway with Svalbard etc. France is quite a square country if you only consider its mainland so it is an odd choice to include non mainland areas but I guess it is a difficult greyzone on what to include and not.

I'd say France is far more a pentagon than a rectangle.

Re: The rectangularness of countries

#143

Post by lagadu »

ProfChronos wrote: post #138

Funny to see that France is only 134th while French refer to their country as "The Exagon" (metropolitan France) - 3 ground borders and 3 sea borders. The expression was coined in the 1860s by school reformists and got popular after the Franco-German War in 1870 when Alsace was lost. To my knowledge French are the only ones to define their country with a geometrical form

Portuguese people also generally see our country as a rectangle too. And no, the islands don't count.

Re: The rectangularness of countries

#144

Post by ablation »

greesil wrote: post #109
filvdg wrote: post #80

For people who like complex borders https://www.google.be/maps/place/Baarle-Hertog/ This is a Belgian city enclave within the Netherlands with enclaves of the Netherlands within its borders

It really brings to mind "City and the City". https://www.amazon.com/City-Random-House-Readers-Circle/dp/0...

Indeed, China Mieville has spoken about it as an influence when writing The City and The City.

Re: The rectangularness of countries

#146

Post by notsureifwant »

fiatjaf wrote: post #141
notsureifwant wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a fair amount of research in economic history on almost exactly this topic. Two recent papers http://www.nber.org/papers/w12328.pdf and https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4s_WKe-US99LV9XVTNVNzFxYW8... have looked at how measures of the artificial-ness of borders (how straight they are, how often they cut through the territory of ethnic groups, ratio of a country's area to the area of its convex hull) are corre…

Who are these people discussing on Twitter? Are they the researchers who publish papers on the topic? (I do not mean these same papers you linked to, just asking if they are serious academics.)

Easterly is an economist at NYU (who published one of the earliest papers on the subject), I'm not sure about the others. However the discussion is a good representation of some of the debate that's gone on regarding interpreting correlations between regular-ness of borders and GDP (i.e. is it that having artificial borders was disruptive, or was it that borders were drawn artificially in areas that had fundamental characteristics which have caused them to have lower GDP today).

Re: The rectangularness of countries

#147

Post by pavel_lishin »

mnw21cam wrote: post #139
pavel_lishin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree; they really shouldn't spend their time leaving disparaging comments of other peoples' hobbies.

Saying someone has way too much time is a compliment, not a criticism.

I've literally never heard that phrased as a compliment.

Re: The rectangularness of countries

#149

Post by clock_tower »

mikeash wrote: post #121
clock_tower wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of Paradox's strategy games, where players routinely complain about "bordergore" and fight wars to make the map look neater...

That's great, never heard of that before. When I search for that term, the first hit is a Reddit thread where the first commenter expresses his desire to "drop-kick" people who do it. Strong emotions! Maybe we can create this world after all. I wonder how many actual wars in the past have been started because someone didn't like how the border looked on a map. It has to be non-zero.

Well, even the Paradox players (who can get up to some pretty horrifying things when the game incentivizes them suitably) realize that fighting over bordergore is a little bit silly... :)

Re: The rectangularness of countries

#150

Post by jbn »

clort wrote: post #28
mrweasel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Netherlands have two islands in the Caribbean that is technically no different than any other "county" of the Netherlands.

which are these? as far as I understood (I lived in Sint Maarten for a couple of years once) the Netherlands Antilles are colonies only, unlike the French islands (Martinique and Guadeloupe mainly, but St Barts and St Martin too) which are overseas departments of France, and also considered part of EU.

Not to be (too) pedantic about it, but

St Barts and St Martin are not overseas departments of France. They used to be part of the Guadeloupe overseas department, but seceded to be a "collectivite d'outremer" (overseas collectivity), which is different status than overseas department or overseas territory (France also has a few of those). St Barts (really "Saint Barthelemy") and St Martin not collect income tax locally and it goes to their budget (I think they wanted to stop shipping all their monies to the French state and/or Guadeloupe).

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