Higher national incomes are correlated with lower political instability. We test three theories linking income to conflict using a new database of export price shocks. Price shocks have no effect on new conflicts, even large shocks in high-risk nations. Rising prices, however, lead to shorter,...

Policymakers can take actions to prevent local conflict before it begins, if such violence can be accurately predicted. We examine the two countries with the richest available sub-national data: Colombia and Indonesia. We assemble two decades of fine-grained violence data by type, alongside...

Policymakers can take actions to prevent local conflict before it begins, if such violence can be accurately predicted. We examine the two countries with the richest available sub-national data: Colombia and Indonesia. We assemble two decades of fine-grained violence data by type, alongside...

Higher national incomes are correlated with political stability. Is this relationship causal? We test three theories linking income to conflict with new data on export price shocks. Price shocks have no effect on new conflict, even large shocks in high-risk nations. Rising prices, however,...

One of the most influential ideas in the study of political instability is that income shocks provoke conflict. “State prize” theories argue that higher revenues increase incentives to capture the state. “Opportunity cost” theories argue that higher prices decrease individual incen-tives...