Does economic growth affect the likelihood of civil war? Answering this question requires dealing with reverse causation. Our approach exploits that international commodity prices have a significant effect on the income growth of Sub-Saharan African countries. We show that lower income growth...

A new dataset by Bazzi and Blattman (2014) allows examining the effects of international commodity prices on the risk of civil war outbreak with more comprehensive data. I find that international commodity price downturns sparked civil wars in Sub-Saharan Africa. Another finding with the new...