The world's poor -- and programs to raise their incomes -- are increasingly concentrated in fragile states. We review the evidence on what interventions work, and whether stimulating employment promotes social stability. Skills training and microfinance have shown little impact on poverty or...

This study examines the impact of the Sierra Leone civil war on household expenditure inequality. The paper exploits three rounds of household survey data for Sierra Leone in an attempt to estimate the impact of the conflict on the distribution of household welfare over both short-run and...

Im populären und politischen Diskurs werden häufig ökonomische Verhältnisse (wie Armut, Ungleichheit oder Wachstumsschwäche) als Gründe für die Entstehung und den Export von Terrorismus aus ärmeren Ländern genannt. Zugleich gelten wirtschaftlich erfolgreiche Staaten häufig als Ziele...

The long-running conflict in northern Uganda has led to major violations of human rights against civilians, destruction of infrastructure, reduced access to social services, and paralysed economic activity. Creating peace and fostering reconciliation in the region have not been successful...

Does poverty lead to crime? We shed light on this question using two independent and exogenous shocks to household income in rural India: the dramatic reduction in import tariffs in the early 1990s and rainfall variations. We find that trade shocks, previously shown to raise relative poverty,...

This paper assesses the usefulness of a new emerging body of work on the micro-level analysis of conflict and violence in advancing our current understanding of the relationship between violent conflict and household poverty. Micro-level empirical evidence on the relationship between violent...

Antipoverty programmes have been successful in helping millions of people afford better livelihoods. While this is well known, little research has yet been conducted that examines the power of such programmes to influence outcomes in times of conflict, especially in countries where antipoverty...

Internal conflicts entail large asset losses for certain segments in the civilian population. Asset losses may compromise the future welfare of households, thus leaving a legacy of structural poverty that is difficult to overcome. The purpose of this article is to analyze how asset losses occur...

We examine the effect of class cleavages on terrorist activity by anarchist and leftist terrorist groups in 99 American, Asian and European countries over the 1860-1950 period. We find that higher levels of political exclusion of the poor, our main measure of class conflict, were associated with...

We examine the effect of class cleavages on terrorist activity by anarchist and leftist terrorist groups in 99 American, Asian and European countries over the 1860-1950 period. We find that higher levels of political exclusion of the poor, our main measure of class conflict, were associated with...