Crop and Conflict: exploring the impact of Inequalityin Agricultural Production on Conflict Risk

Paola Vesco (), Matija Kovacic () and Malcolm Mistry ()
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Paola Vesco: Department of Economics, Ca' Foscari University of Venice; CMCC, Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change; PRIO, Peace Research Institute Oslo
Matija Kovacic: Department of Economics, Ca' Foscari University of Venice
Malcolm Mistry: Department of Economics, Ca' Foscari University of Venice

No 2019: 17, Working Papers from Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari"

Abstract: Recent attempts to find a robust empirical correlation between climate variability, crop production and civil conflict risk have been quite inconclusive. In this paper, we argue that the ambiguity in empirical findings may be partly due to a general tendency to treat agricultural production in absolute terms, while neglecting the importance of the relative deprivation triggered by unequal distribution in crop yields across locations and between groups. To test this hypothesis, we rely on high-resolution global gridded data on the local yield of four main crops for the period 1981-2017, and calculate the level of inequality in crop production by means of a Gini index using the grid-cell information on yearly crop yields both at the country level and between identity based groups (regional and ethnic). In addition, for each level of spatial disaggregation, we compute the Gini coefficient using information on crop production from rural grid-cells only. Our results reveal a strong and robust association between crop inequality and the probability of conflict outbreak. This effect is particularly pronounced in the case of inequality among rural areas. Climatic variability, on the other hand, is shown not to increase significantly the destabilizing effect of crop inequality. We also find that akin ethnic competition and discrimination along ethnic lines represent good predictors of conflict outbreak, especially in the case of ethnic conflicts, and when the between-group inequality in crop production is calculated along ethnic boundaries.

Keywords: Agriculture; Inequality; Climate Change; Conflict (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 F51 Q18 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 59 pages
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev and nep-env
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ven:wpaper:2019:17

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