We explore the severity of an ongoing dispute over a productive resource within a country that participates in world trade. In addition to arming, the contending groups in our setting choose either to engage in destructive conflict or to settle their dispute peacefully. Our central objective is...

In this chapter, we review the recent literature on conflict and appropriation. Allowing for the possibility of conflict, which amounts to recognizing the possibility that property rights are not perfectly and costlessly enforced, represents a significant departure from the traditional paradigm...

Civil wars and conflict can be understood from an economic point of view only if there is incomplete contracting. I examine such settings and first discuss sources of incomplete contracting, from geography and ethnic and social distance to external interventions due to geopolitics or the...