Income and armed civil conflict: An instrumental variables approach

Brunnschweiler, Christa N. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8610-6433 and Lujala, Päivi (2017) Income and armed civil conflict: An instrumental variables approach. Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy, 23 (4). ISSN 1554-8597

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Abstract

The large empirical conflict literature has established that there is a strong negative link between economic variables and the onset of an armed civil conflict. However, it has been difficult to demonstrate a clear causality between poor economic performance and increased risk of conflict because of potential endogeneity issues, especially for large country samples. Most existing studies that analyse the causal links focus on the effects of economic growth on conflict, even though conventional conflict studies find the strongest relationship for income levels. In this article, we use three new exogenous instruments for income per capita, based on historical data for mailing times, telegram charges and urbanization rates. Using instrumental variables methods and global panel data for the period 1946–2014, we show that the negative effect of income per capita on the probability of conflict onset is consistently strong and larger than in conventional estimations using pooled ordinary least square regressions.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: sdg 8 - decent work and economic growth,sdg 16 - peace, justice and strong institutions ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/decent_work_and_economic_growth
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Economics
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Environment, Resources and Conflict
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Applied Econometrics And Finance
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Sciences
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Behavioural Economics
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Behavioural and Experimental Development Economics
University of East Anglia Schools > Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 02 Sep 2017 05:06
Last Modified: 05 Jul 2023 09:30
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/64725
DOI: 10.1515/peps-2017-0024

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