Objectives: To examine patterns in the timing and location of incidents of mar-itime piracy to seewhether, likemany urban crimes, attacks cluster in space and time. Methods: Data for all incidents of maritime piracy worldwide recorded by theNationalGeospatial IntelligenceAgency are analyzed using time-seriesmod-els andmethodsoriginally developed todetect disease contagion.Results:At the macro level, analyses suggest that incidents of pirate attacks are concentrated in five subregions of the earth’s oceans and that the time series for these different subregions differ. At the micro level, analyses suggest that for the last 16 years (ormore), pirate attacks appear to cluster in space and time suggesting that pat-terns are not static but are also not random.Conclusions:Much like other types of crime, pirate attacks cluster in space, and following an attack at one location the risk of others at the same location or nearby is temporarily elevated. The identification of such regularities has implications for the understanding of mar-itime piracy and for predicting the future locations of attacks.

The accurate monitoring of piracy tactics is imperative for understanding the changing nature of piracy. Using the most comprehensive, global piracy data set available to date—the Contemporary Maritime Piracy Database (CMPD), this article documents the change in piracy, identifying that the new form of piracy that emerged in the 1990s became the dominant type of piracy in the study period. The CMPD suggests that even though the escalation of piracy in Somalia has affected the profile of piracy overall, other forms of piracy, which display a different set of characteristics, still remain.

This paper estimates the effect of piracy attacks on shipping costs using a unique data set on shipping contracts in the dry bulk market. We look at shipping routes whose shortest path exposes them to piracy attacks and find that the increase in attacks in 2008 lead to around a ten percent increase in shipping costs. We use this estimate to get a sense of the welfare loss imposed by piracy. Our intermediate estimate suggests that the creation of $120 million of revenue for pirates in the Somalia area led to a welfare loss of over $1.5 billion.

This paper estimates the e¤ect of Somali piracy attacks on shipping costs using data on shipping contracts in the dry bulk market. We look at shipping routes whose shortest path exposes them to piracy and …nd that the increase in attacks in 2008 lead to around a 8 to 12 percent increase in costs. From this we calculate the welfare loss imposed by piracy. We estimate that generating around 120 USD million of revenue for Somali pirates led to a welfare loss of anywhere between 0.9 and 3.3 USD billion. Therefore, piracy is an expensive way of making transfers. We are grateful to Daron Acemoglu, Elhanan Helpman, Marit Rehavi and a number of seminar par-ticipants for comments and advice. We also thank Dieter Berg, Tilman Kratz, Richard Mcenery, Richard Neylon, and Neil Roberts for their many helpful insights into the workings of the industry. Ali Saadatnia and

Objectives: To examine patterns in the timing and location of incidents of mari-time piracy to see whether, like many urban crimes, attacks cluster in space and time.Methods:Data for all incidents of maritime piracy worldwide recorded by theNationalGeospatial IntelligenceAgency are analyzed using time-seriesmod-els andmethods originally developed to detect disease contagion. Results:At the macro level, analyses suggest that incidents of pirate attacks are concentrated in five subregions of the earth’s oceans and that the time series for these different subregions differ. At the micro level, analyses suggest that for the last 16 years (or more), pirate attacks appear to cluster in space and time suggesting that patterns are not static but are also not random. Conclusions: Much like other types of crime, pirate attacks cluster in space, and following an attack at one location the riskof others at the same locationornearby is temporarily elevated. The identification of such regularities has implications for the understanding of maritime piracy and for predicting the future locations of attacks.

This paper estimates the e¤ect of piracy attacks on shipping costs using a unique data set on shipping contracts in the dry bulk market. We look at shipping routes whose shortest path exposes them to piracy attacks and …nd that the increase in attacks in 2008 lead to around a ten percent increase in shipping costs. We use this estimate to get a sense of the welfare loss imposed by piracy. Our intermediate estimate suggests that the creation of $120 million of revenue for pirates in the Somalia area led to a welfare loss of over $1:5 billion. We thank seminar participants at the LSE(EOPP), DIW and IAE. We thank Richard Neylon for useful advice. Ali Saadatnia and Alessandro Torti provided valuable research assistance. We thank the International Growth Centre (IGC) at LSE for …nancial assis-tance in collecting the data. Fetzer thanks the Konrad Adenauer Foundation for support. Mueller thanks MOVE. All mistakes are ours. 1 1

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Exchange rate-based stabilization revisited: An analysis of its short-term impact on external equilibrium in Argentina (1991-1995)