Insurgency and small Wars: Estimation of Unobserved Coalition Structures

Eric Weese and Francesco Trebbi

No 236712, Center Discussion Papers from Yale University, Economic Growth Center

Abstract: Insurgency and guerrilla warfare impose enormous socio-economic costs and often persist for decades. The opacity of such forms of conflict is often an obstacle to effective international humanitarian intervention and development programs. To shed light on the internal organization of otherwise unknown insurgent groups, this paper proposes two methodologies for the detection of unobserved coalitions of militant factions in conflict areas, and studies their main determinants. Our approach is parsimonious and based on daily geocoded incident-level data on insurgent attacks alone. We provide applications to the Afghan conflict during the 2004-2009 period and to Pakistan during the 2008- 2011 period, identifying systematically different coalition structures. Further applications are discussed.

Keywords: Political Economy; Public Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 79
Date: 2016-05
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Insurgency and Small Wars: Estimation of Unobserved Coalition Structures (2016)
Working Paper: Insurgency and Small Wars: Estimation of Unobserved Coalition Structures (2016)
Working Paper: Insurgency and Small Wars: Estimation of Unobserved Coalition Structures (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:yaleeg:236712

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.236712

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