The Elusive Determinants of Civil Wars

Thorsten Janus

Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, 2019, vol. 25, issue 3, 15

Abstract: Like the empirical growth literature, the empirical civil war literature has identified few robust determinants. In this paper, I show that the lack of robust estimates is consistent with rational, forward-looking behavior in a simple dynamic conflict model with asymmetric information. The main result is most of the conflict determinants, such as income per capita, inequality, and natural resource revenues, have ambiguous effects on the conflict risk. The ambiguities largely reflect that, when the parameters change, agents re-optimize.

Keywords: conflict; political economy; political instability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 O38 P48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1515/peps-2019-0006

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