We propose two new concepts, of non-state sovereign entrepreneurs and the non-territorial sovereign organizations they form, and relate them to issues pertaining to state sovereignty, governance failures, and violent social conflict over the appropriation of the powers that accrue to states in...

Natural disasters claim thousands of lives each year and can be a heavy burden for already vulnerable societies. Are natural disasters also a cause of violent conflict? While most studies based on systematic empirical research do find this to be the case, there are also known cases where natural...

This paper models the early dynamics of insurgency using an agent-based computer simulation of civilians, insurgents, and soldiers. In the simulation, insurgents choose to attack government forces, which then strike back. Such government counterattacks may result in the capture or killing of...

Most nations have experienced an internal armed conflict since 1960. The past decade has witnessed an explosion of research into the causes and consequences of civil wars, belatedly bringing the topic into the economics mainstream. This article critically reviews this interdisciplinary...

Are civil wars partly caused by low economic growth? And do democratic institutions attenuate the impact of low growth on the likelihood of civil war? Our approach to answering these questions exploits that international commodity prices have a significant effect on income growth in Sub-Saharan...

A popular "stylized fact" is that poverty is a main determinant of civil war: several scholars have interpreted the correlation between the two as evidence supporting this claim. In this paper, we find that the relationship between poverty and civil war is spurious, and is accounted for by...

This study exploits district-level variation in the timing and intensity of civil war violence to investigate whether early-life exposure to civil wars affects labor-market outcomes later in life. In particular, we examine the impacts of armed conflict in Peru, a country that experienced the...

This paper estimates the causal impact of landmines on child health and household expenditures in Angola by exploiting geographical variations in landmine intensity. We generate exogenous variation in landmine intensity using the distance between communes and rebel headquarters. As predicted by...

While some of the intrastate war literature calls for the disaggregation of civil conflict, most of those studies focus on the geography of civil conflict failing to take into account the various actors involved in such conflicts. This study addresses the multi-actor nature of civil conflict by...