Mineral price shocks and Native American conflict

Marco Del Angel, Gregory Hess and Marc D. Weidenmier

Economics Letters, 2024, vol. 240, issue C

Abstract: This study exploits exogenous changes in the world price of gold and silver together with a new geocoded dataset of military engagements to investigate the extent to which Native American conflicts were caused by mining discoveries after the American Civil War. We find that mineral price shocks have a large and significant effect on the incidence of conflict. Our results are robust to various sensitivity checks and are consistent with the narrative evidence from historical reports from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. This is the first paper to establish a causal relationship between mining discoveries and Native American conflict.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176524002556
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:ecolet:v:240:y:2024:i:c:s0165176524002556

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2024.111771

Access Statistics for this article

Economics Letters is currently edited by Economics Letters Editorial Office

More articles in Economics Letters from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().