Income shocks and social unrest: theory and evidence

Christian Almer, Jérémy Laurent-Lucchetti and Manuel Oechslin ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Combining theoretical and empirical work, this paper explores the impact of economic shocks on the incidence of social unrest (i.e., mass demonstrations and violent riots) in autocracies. Our theory predicts negative economic shocks to boost unrest since-in bad times-fighting the regime to reduce the level of resource diversion becomes cheaper. Using a new dataset on political instability in Africa, our empirical analysis confirms this prediction. The instrumental variables estimates-which take into account the potential endogeneity of economic shocks-suggest a significant increase in the level of social unrest as a response to a decline in real per capita GDP.

Keywords: Conflict; social unrest; economic shocks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 O17 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/34487/7/MPRA_paper_34487.pdf revised version (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:34426

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