Mobile phone coverage and violent conflict

Klaus Ackermann (), Sefa Awaworyi Churchill and Russell Smyth
Additional contact information
Klaus Ackermann: SoDa Labs and Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics, Monash Business School, Monash University

No 2021-06, SoDa Laboratories Working Paper Series from Monash University, SoDa Laboratories

Abstract: We examine the effects of mobile phone coverage on violent conflicts in Africa using a new monthly panel dataset on mobile phone coverage at 55 55 km grid cell levels for 32 African countries covering the period from 2008 to 2018. The base rate of a conflict event in a month across our data set is 0.0039 with a standard deviation of 0.0620. We find that access to mobile phone coverage increases the probability of a conflict occurring in the next month by 0.0028. This finding is robust to a suite of sensitivity checks including the use of various specifications and alternative datasets. We examine heterogeneity on the impact of mobile phone coverage across state-based conflict, non-state-based conflict and one-sided conflict, and find that our results are being driven by non-state conflicts. We examine economic growth as a channel through which mobile phone coverage influences conflict. In doing so, we construct new satellite data for night-time light activity as a proxy for economic growth. We find that economic activity is a channel through which mobile phone coverage influences conflicts, and that higher economic growth weakens the positive effect of mobile phone coverage on conflict.

Keywords: Mobile phones; Cell phone coverage; Violence; Conflict; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 D74 O13 Q34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big and nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://soda-wps.s3-website-ap-southeast-2.amazonaw ... r/sodwps/2021-06.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Mobile phone coverage and violent conflict (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ajr:sodwps:2021-06

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://www.monash.edu/business/soda-labs/home

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SoDa Laboratories Working Paper Series from Monash University, SoDa Laboratories SoDa Laboratories, Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australia. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ashani Amarasinghe ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).