Scientific knowledge on the effectiveness of governmental military build-ups to terminate intrastate conflicts is sparse and inconclusive. Developing a war-of-attrition framework, we derive the impact of governments' armaments on the duration of these conflicts: military build-ups, as reflected in inflows of major conventional weapons, enable the government to inflict costs onto its adversaries, forcing them to withdraw earlier from the conflict. This type of weapons is required in particular to project military power over larger distances and to fight rebels in remote areas. Using SIPRI arms transfer data for the first time in a disaggregated dyadic design, covering 418 government-rebel group dyads in 134 conflicts, we empirically corroborate the formal model's predictions. As endogeneity issues might arise when governments procure arms in anticipation of a protracted conflict, we ensure causal identification with an instrumental variable survival approach based on the Aalen additive hazards model.
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