In the past decade, nearly 20 studies have found a strong, persistent pattern in surveys and behavioral experiments from over 40 countries: individual exposure to war violence tends to increase social cooperation at the local level, including community participation and prosocial behavior. Thus...

While most civil wars seem to have an economic basis, they are generally pushed by political, ethnic, and religious differences. This paper attempts to identify the drivers of the Syrian civil war of 2011 by investigating the role of ethnic divisions in starting a conflict. We integrate a...

In this paper we investigate whether the effects of terrorism in one country spillover to affect trade in neighboring nations. Using a sample of more than 160 countries from 1976 to 2014, we report robust evidence that terrorist attacks in a nation's contiguous neighbors significantly reduce...

We study the 420 US drone strikes in Pakistan from 2006-2016, isolating causal effects on terrorism, anti-US sentiment, and radicalization via an instrumental variable strategy based on wind. Drone strikes are suggested to encourage terrorism in Pakistan, bearing responsibility for 16 percent of...

In 1998, the Good Friday Agreement concluded a period of violence in Northern Ireland yet the scars of the conflict remained prevalent in the political landscape. Rival communities remained divided, economic performance was poor and intercommunity tensions frequently manifested. In a bid to...

This paper develops a theoretical framework that makes predictions on (a) the conditions under which a populist party decides to run and the policy position it takes and (b) voters' response under different electoral systems. We test these predictions using data on Italian municipal elections...

In this paper we assess the effectiveness of suicide attacks and targeted killings in the Second Intifada. We find evidence that the targeted killings of Palestinian leaders by Israel reduce realized Palestinian violence. We find, however, that intended Palestinian violence is increasing at low...

In this study we extend our previous work to examine the dynamic relationship between violence committed by Palestinian factions and that committed by Israel during the Second Intifada. We find a statistically significant relationship between Israeli fatalities claimed by groups associated with...

We show that the exposure to war-related violence increases the quantity of children temporarily, with permanent negative consequences for the quality of the current and previous cohort of children. Our empirical evidence is based on Nepal, which experienced a ten year long civil conflict of...

States, in their conflicts with militant groups embedded in civilian populations, often resort to policies of collective punishment to erode civilian support for the militants. We attempt to evaluate the efficacy of such policies in the context of the Gaza Strip, where Israel's blockade and...