The Economic Origins of Conflict in Africa

Eoin McGuirk and Marshall Burke ()
Additional contact information
Marshall Burke: Stanford University and NBER

No 242, HiCN Working Papers from Households in Conflict Network

Abstract: 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, as poor consumers turn to soldiering and appropriation in order to maintain a minimum consumption target. 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.

Pages: 79 pages
Date: 2017-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-agr and nep-dev
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (41)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The Economic Origins of Conflict in Africa (2020)
Working Paper: The Economic Origins of Conflict in Africa (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hic:wpaper:242

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