Medication Against Conflict

Abstract

The consequences of successful public health interventions for social violence and conflict are largely unknown. This paper closes this gap by evaluating the effect of a major health intervention -- the successful expansion of anti-retroviral therapy (ART) to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic -- in Africa. To identify the effect, we combine exogenous variation in the scope for treatment and global variation in drug prices. We find that the ART expansion significantly reduced the number of violent events in African countries and sub-national regions. The effect pertains to social violence and unrest, not civil war. The evidence also shows that the effect is not explained by general improvements in economic prosperity, but related to health improvements, greater approval of government policy, and increased trust in political institutions. Results of a counterfactual simulation reveal the largest potential gains in countries with intermediate HIV prevalence where disease control has been given relatively low priority.

Trade liberalization, economic activity and political violence in the Global South: evidence from PTAs

“…In the main analysis, and similarly to what we do with luminosity, we use the log of the count of violent episodes in a given spatial unit (adding one not to lose observations with no violence) to mitigate the impact of outliers, and assess robustness using a dummy equal to one if any violence is recorded. We also show that the results hold true when measuring political violence using the information from the Social Conflict Analysis Database (SCAD), which has been used extensively in the conflict literature (e.g., see Berlanda et al 2022). SCAD represents a complete and extensive measure of social violence of different forms (protests, demonstrations, riots, strikes, and other forms of social disturbances) and comprises a classification of different event types, including organized events, spontaneous events, and events related to elections, economic grievances, or human rights.…”

Mediation, Military, and Money: The Promises and Pitfalls of Outside Interventions to End Armed Conflicts

“…In particular, Rohner and Saia (2020) draw on a quasi-natural experiment of school construction in Indonesia, and conclude that an exogenous increase in the number of schooling places reduces the scope for conflict. Relatedly, Berlanda et al (2022) instrument the access to antiviral treatments against HIV in Africa using cross-sectional variation in historic infection rates and over-time evolution in medical production costs, and find that better health provision down social violence.…”

Conflict, Civil Wars, and Human Development

“…Conflict entails manifold negative consequences on various aspects of health, as discussed above. At the same time, various papers have made the point that ill health is a potent driver of conflict (Cervellati et al (2017(Cervellati et al ( , 2021; Berlanda et al (2022)).…”

“…Examples of pacifying policies that can raise productivity include school construction (see Rohner and Saia (2019) on a school construction program in Indonesia), health interventions (see Berlanda et al (2022) on antiretroviral treatment in Africa), or labor-market policies (see Fetzer (2020) on a public employment program in India). Importantly, policies that result in potentially greater rents from appropriation may back-fire (see, for example, Nunn and Qian (2014) on the impact of US food aid).…”