This paper studies the effects of bilateral foreign aid on conflict escalation and de-escalation. We make three major contributions. First, we combine data on civil wars with data on low level conflicts in a new ordinal measure capturing the two-sided and multifaceted nature of conflict. Second,...

We investigate the empirical impact of violence as compared to other trade impediments on trade flows. Our analysis is based on a panel data set with annual observations on 177 countries from 1968 to 1999, which brings together information from the Rose [2004] dataset, the ITERATE dataset for...

During the past two centuries, western nations have successively extended the voting franchise to citizens of lower income. We explain this process of democratization as a rational way for incumbent elites to wage war effectively on other nations, as in a strategic game of international conflict...

We provide evidence about the mechanisms linking resource-related income shocks to conflict. Combining temporal variation in international drug prices with spatial variation in the suitability to produce opium, we show that higher drug prices reduce conflict over the 2002-2014 period in...

We reconsider the relationship between oil and conflict, focusing on the location of oil resources. In a panel of 132 countries over the period 1962-2009, we show that oil windfalls increase the probability of conflict in onshore-rich countries, while they decrease this probability in...

Using high-resolution data from Africa over the period 1998-2012, this paper investigates the hypothesis that a higher exposure to malaria increases the incidence of civil violence. The analysis uses panel data at the 1o grid cell level at monthly frequency. The econometric identification...

We combine original geo-referenced data on mining extraction of 15 minerals with information on conflict events at spatial resolution of 0.5o x 0.5o for all Africa over 1997-2010. Exploiting exogenous variations in world prices, we find a positive impact of mining on conict at the local level....

This paper studies how an increase in the number of armed groups operating within an area affects the amount of organized political violence. We use plausible exogenous variation in the number of armed groups in Pakistan, by exploiting the split of a major group due to the natural death of its...

This paper proposes a simple framework to better understand an opposition group's choice between peace, terrorism, and open civil conflict against the government. Our model implies that terrorism emerges if constraints on the ruling executive group are intermediate and rents are sizeable, hereas...

We analyze how trade openness matters for interstate conflict over productive resources. Our analysis features a terms-of-trade channel that makes security policies trade-regime dependent. Specifically, trade between two adversaries reduces each one's incentive to arm given the opponent's...