Fertile Ground for Conflict: Evidence Revisited using Spatial First Differences

Lotanna E. Emediegwu, Uzoma Iloanugo and Jubril O. Animashaun

No 356728, Agricultural Economics Society 99th Annual Conference, April 14-16, 2025, The University of Bordeaux, France from Agricultural Economics Society (AES)

Abstract: In this paper, we revisit the empirical evidence regarding the effect of variations in soil fertility on violence at local level. Recent evidence using spatial econometrics technique shows that increases in input (fertilizer) prices exacerbate income inequality and conflict, especially where soil fertility is more heterogeneous. However, when observational units are dense in physical space, they become susceptible to spatial dependence and heterogeneity. Our main contribution is methodological: we solve the foregoing issue by using local soil nutrient availability measurement to proxy soil fertility and employing spatial first differences (SFD) to investigate the effect of soil quality on local conflict. This methodology offers a framework that eliminates bias in soil quality data while accounting for spatial dependence and unobserved spatial heterogeneity. Also, we use geo-referenced data across countries within Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions at a spatial resolution of (0.5 × 0.5) degrees over a more extended period (1997 to 2022) to show that soil nutrient heterogeneity magnifies conflicts.

Keywords: Crop Production/Industries; Research Methods/Statistical Methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aes025:356728

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.356728

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