We analyse the effect of violence and rebellion on the evolution of household welfare. We collected new panel data for Burundi (1999-2007) in which we reinterviewed original as well as newly formed households (split-offs). We use several definitions of the household as unit of analysis and test...

Grievance and reduced opportunity costs are two popular ideas within the civil war literature to explain participation in violent rebellion. We test both hypotheses at the village-level using data on recruitment activities during the civil war in Burundi. We use historical data on violent...

We analyse the effect of civil war on household welfare. Using Burundian panel data for the 1998-2007 period in which we re-interviewed original as well as newly formed households (split-offs), we show that headcount poverty decreased by 3.5 % points when split-off households are taken into...

We study the effect of the second Intifada, a violent conflict between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors which erupted in September 2000, and the ensuing riots of Arab citizens of Israel, on labor market outcomes of Arabs relative to those of Jewish Israelis. The analysis relies on a large...

In 2009, hostilities were brought to an end in Burundi when the FNL rebel group laid down weapons. In exchange for peace, ex-rebels benefited from a disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) program to finance their return to civilian life. A few years earlier, another rebel group...

In an ethnically polarized country, does aversion towards inter-ethnic inequity induce citizens to vote for a party promoting an equitable allocation of national resources among ethnic groups? We base our analysis on a survey that we conducted among 331 students from Addis Ababa University. We...

History offers many examples of dictators who worsened their behavior significantly over time (like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe), while there are also cases of dictators who have displayed remarkable improvements (like Jerry Rawlings of Ghana). We show that such mutations can result from rational...

Recent research on violence against civilians during wars has emphasized war-related factors over political ones. For example, factors such as control of territory or characteristics of the armed groups have been prioritized at the expense of factors such as ideological alignments or local...

Since World War II there have been about fifty episodes of large-scale mass killings of civilians and massive forced displacements. They were usually meticulously planned and independent of military goals. We provide a model where conflict onset, conflict intensity and the decision to commit...

We use experimental data from 35 randomly selected communities in Burundi to examine the impact of exposure to conflict on social-, risk- and time preferences. These types of preferences are important as they determine people’s propensity to invest and their ability to overcome social...