Commodity Price Shocks and the Seasonality of Conflict

Commodity price shocks can exacerbate conflict in low income countries with weak institutions. In these countries, agriculture usually is a key source of employment and income. A unique feature of agricultural income is its seasonality, which manifests in harvest-time windfalls. Conflict, therefore, can be seasonal as well. We combine temporal variation in international cereal prices at monthly frequency with spatial variation in cereal crop production and harvest seasons at the one-degree grid cell level to investigate the effect of year–on–year growth in cereal prices on conflict across Africa. We find that in the cropland, conflict is more likely during the first three months after a harvest, when the expected value of spoils to be appropriated is highest. During this period, a one–standard–deviation increase in prices can result in a more than three–percent increase in conflict incidents. We also find that among potential perpetrators, political militias are the most likely culprits behind seasonal conflict in the cropland of Africa. This study offers an important nuance to the growing literature aimed at investigating the economic causes of conflict in fragile states with weak institutions.