Natural Resources and Violent Conflict: Resource Abundance, Dependence and the Onset of Civil Wars

Christa N. Brunnschweiler () and Erwin Bulte ()

No 08/78, CER-ETH Economics working paper series from CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich

Abstract: In this paper we examine the claim that natural resources invite civil conflict, and challenge the main stylized facts in this literature. We find that the nature of causation between resource dependence and civil war is opposite to conventional wisdom. In particular, (i) civil war creates dependence on primary sector exports, but the reverse is not true, and (ii) resource abundance is associated with a reduced probability of the onset of war. These results are robust to a range of specifications and, considering the conflict channel, we conclude there is no reason to regard resources as a general curse to development.

Keywords: Civil war; resource abundance; resource dependence; greed versus grievance; resource curse (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q34 O11 N40 N50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-ene, nep-env, nep-his and nep-pol
Date: 2008-01

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cer.ethz.ch/research/wp_08_78.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Natural resources and violent conflict: resource abundance, dependence, and the onset of civil wars (2009)
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eth:wpswif:08-78

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CER-ETH Economics working paper series from CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().