Climate Change and Market Collapse: A Model Applied to Darfur

Ola Olsson

Games, 2016, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-27

Abstract: A recurring argument in the global debate is that climate deterioration is likely to make social conflicts over diminishing natural resources more common in the future. The exact mechanism behind such a development has so far not been successfully characterized in the literature. In this paper, we present a general model of a community populated by farmers and herders who can either divide up land in a market economy or in autarky. The key insight from our model is that decreasing resources can make trade between the two groups collapse, which in turn makes each group’s welfare independent of that of the other. Predictions from the model are then applied to the conflict in Darfur. Our analysis suggests that three decades of drought in the area can at least partially explain the observed disintegration of markets and the subsequent rise of social tensions.

Keywords: market integration; resource scarcity; vulnerable environments; Darfur (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C C7 C70 C71 C72 C73 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/7/1/9/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/7/1/9/ (text/html)

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:gam:jgames:v:7:y:2016:i:1:p:9-:d:66071

Access Statistics for this article

Games is currently edited by Ms. Susie Huang

More articles in Games from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().