We explore the effect of historical ethnic borders on contemporary conflict in Africa. We document that both the intensive and extensive margins of contemporary conflict are higher close to historical ethnic borders. Exploiting variations across artificial regions within an ethnicity's...

In this paper, we study the impact of exogenous variations of international oil prices on the incidence of protest, while exploring the role of the shadow economy as a mitigating factor. We find that oil price shocks are negatively associated with protests, but the effect is less severe the...

Despite informality being the norm in conflict-affected countries, most estimates of the impact of conflict on economic activity rely on formal sector data. Using high-frequency data from Afghanistan, this paper assesses how surges in conflict intensity affect not only the formal sector, but...

We study the role of proximity to historical ethnic borders in determining individual land ownership in Sub-Saharan Africa. Following an instrumental variable strategy, we document that individuals have a lower likelihood of owning land near historical ethnic borders. In particular, the...

Conflict undermines development, while poverty, in turn, breeds conflict. Policy interventions such as cash transfers could lower engagement in conflict by raising poor households' welfare and productivity. However, cash transfers may also trigger appropriation or looting of cash or assets. The...

Exploiting a natural experiment and an innovative survey design, we study the social and political legacies of armed conflict exposure (ACE) among Turkish conscripts. Our empirical framework identifies the causal impact and isolates the mediating pathways for the average male randomly picked...

We study the role of proximity to historical ethnic borders in determining individual land ownership in Sub-Saharan Africa. Following an instrumental variable strategy, we document that individuals have a lower likelihood of owning land near historical ethnic borders. In particular, the...

Entrepreneurs are often situated in extreme environments characterized by violent conflict. Yet, war is largely a blind spot in entrepreneurship scholarship. As a first step to closing this gap, we offer a well-identified synthetic control study of entrepreneurial dynamics in the Russo-Ukrainian...