The Economic Origins of Conflict in Africa / Eoin McGuirk, Marshall Burke.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McGuirk, Eoin.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Burke, Marshall.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w23056.

NBER working paper series no. w23056

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2017.

Summary:

We study the impact of plausibly exogenous global food price shocks on local violence across the African continent. In food-producing areas, higher food prices reduce conflict over the control of territory (what we call "factor conflict") and increase conflict over the appropriation of surplus ("output conflict"). We argue that this difference arises because higher prices raise the opportunity cost of soldiering for producers, while simultaneously inducing net consumers to appropriate increasingly valuable surplus as their real wages fall. In regions without crop agriculture, higher food prices increase both factor conflict and output conflict. We validate local-level findings on output conflict using geocoded survey data on interpersonal theft and violence against commercial farmers and traders. Ignoring the distinction between producer and consumer effects leads to attenuated estimates. Our findings help reconcile a growing but ambiguous literature on the economic roots of conflict.

Notes:

Print version record

January 2017.