External Shocks, Internal Shots: The Geography of Civil Conflicts

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractThis paper uses detailed information on the latitude and longitude of conflict events within a set of Sub-Saharan African countries to study the impact of external income shocks on the likelihood of violence. We consider a number of external demand shocks faced by the country or the regions within countries -changes in the world demand of agricultural commodities, financial crises in the partner countries or changes in foreign trade policy -and combine these with information reflecting the natural level of trade openness of the location. We find that (i) within-country, the incidence, intensity and onset of conflicts are generally negatively and significantly correlated with income shocks within locations; (ii) this relationship is significantly weaker for the most remote locations, i.e those located away from the main seaports, (iii) at country-level, we cannot detect any significant effect of these shock on conflict incidence or onset; but (iv) large and longlasting shocks seem to affect the location of conflict outbreaks. In general, our results suggest that external income shocks are important determinants of the intensity and geography of conflicts within countries. However, conflicts tend to start in remote locations which are naturally less affected by foreign shocks, which might explain why these seem to have little effect on conflict onset at the country-level. Abstract This paper uses detailed information on the latitude and longitude of conflict events within a set of Sub-Saharan African countries to study the impact of external income shocks on the likelihood of violence. We consider a number of external demand shocks faced by the country or the regions within countries -changes in the world demand of agricultural commodities, financial crises in the partner countries or changes in foreign trade policy -and combine these with information reflecting the natural level of trade openness of the location. We find that (i) within-country, the incidence, intensity and onset of conflicts are generally negatively and significantly correlated with income shocks within locations; (ii) this relationship is significantly weaker for the most remote locations, i.e those located away from the main seaports, (iii) at country-level, we cannot detect any significant effect of these shock on conflict incidence or onset; but (iv) large and longlasting shocks seem to affect the location of conflict outbreaks. In general, our resu...

This Mine is Mine! How Minerals Fuel Conflicts in Africa

“…For instance, Dube and Vargas (2013) find that a 68 percent fall in coffee prices in the average Colombian coffee-producing municipality results in a 14 to 31 percent increase in conflicts, depending on the conflict measure. Our point estimates are also similar in magnitude to the effect found using ACLED data by Berman and Couttenier (2015), who study how changes in foreign demand for agricultural commodities produced by sub-Saharan African region affect violence.…”

Trade and civil conflict: Revisiting the cross‐country evidence

“… This result appears to contradict those of two other recent studies, Berman and Couttenier () and Chaudion et al (2013). However the former considers only large economic downturns in trading partners (i.e.…”

“…This channel would go in the opposite direction to the opportunity cost channel, and their net effect would be an empirical question. In the case of the Colombian conflict the opportunity cost channel appears to be dominant for crops such as coffee, bananas and other legal agricultural crops (Berman and Couttenier, ; Dube and Vargas, ), while the rebel funding mechanism is more important for coca production (Angrist and Kugler, ). The distinction between commodities is a key feature of our work as well (and it is important to make sense of our results).…”

“…Unfortunately, the evidence on the impact of these trade shocks on conflict is limited. A few studies consider the impact of changes in demand in trading partners, mostly finding that increases in external demand reduce the probability of conflict and its intensity (Berman and Couttenier, ; Chaudion et al, and Bruckner and Ciccone, ). This evidence is consistent with the opportunity cost hypothesis.…”

“…This evidence is consistent with the opportunity cost hypothesis. Some evidence also is emerging on the role of trading partners’ trade policy in affecting the intensity of conflict (Berman and Couttenier, ; Bhavnani and Jha, ).…”