Aditya Chakrabortty on UK riots

From UK riots: political classes see what they want to see:
"Many economists have spent the past few days passing around a paper on the Hindu-Muslim riots in India in the 80s and 90s. Written by Anjali Thomas Bohlken and Ernest John Sergeant in 2010, it finds that "just a 1% increase in the [economic] growth rate decreases the expected number of riots by over 5%". Recessions are good for riots: perhaps no surprise, there. What matters, they argue, is when people suffer abrupt drops in living standards – and that goes for Hackney as well as Athens.

That point is rammed home by a new paper from the economists Jacopo Ponticelli and Hans-Joachim Voth. Titled "Austerity and Anarchy", it should be essential reading for all those who want an academic take on what spending cuts made in Whitehall might mean on their local high streets. Ponticelli and Voth look at social unrest across Europe from 1919 to the present – and find a clear link between "fiscal retrenchment and instability" that goes beyond the misery caused by recession."
Ponticelli and Voth paper here.
Vaughan Bell on Riot Technology and Tom Stafford's When explaining becomes a sin.