Recent work has suggested the foreign-led reconstruction effort carried out in Afghanistan and Iraq can mitigate violence because it helps win the “hearts and minds” of local people. For the case of Afghanistan, we show there is no evidence behind such an assertion. Analyzing unique data on...

That military expenditure and conflict have adverse consequences for development is unsurprising but important. The policy challenge is to reduce them. I have suggested that substantial components of military expenditure could be reduced without jeopardizing security interests. Military...

Discourse and policy on war economies has tended to treat them as separate and distinct from both the pre- and post- conflict economy. In reality, war economies tend to represent simply more violent versions of the neo-patrimonialism and external trade relations that characterize many developing...

Five factors contribute to humanitarian crises in Africa. They are: stagnating and declining incomes, rising income inequality, avaricious competition to extract Africa's mineral wealth, military centrality, and a tradition of violent conflict. One factor - ethnic differences - turns out to be a...