War and Relatedness

Enrico Spolaore and Romain Wacziarg

No 2696, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We develop a theory of interstate conflict in which the degree of genealogical relatedness between populations has a positive effect on their conflict propensities because more closely related populations, on average, tend to interact more and develop more disputes over sets of common issues. We examine the empirical relationship between the occurrence of interstate conflicts and the degree of relatedness between countries, showing that populations that are genetically closer are more prone to go to war with each other, even after controlling for a wide set of measures of geographic distance and other factors that affect conflict, including measures of trade and democracy.

Keywords: conflict; genetic distance; common issues; rival issues (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 F51 F59 H56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp2696.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: War and Relatedness (2016)
Working Paper: War and Relatedness (2013)
Working Paper: War and Relatedness (2012)
Working Paper: War and Relatedness (2009)
Working Paper: War and Relatedness (2009)
Working Paper: War and Relatedness (2009)
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:ces:ceswps:_2696

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().