IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ube/dpvwib/dp1203.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Climate (change) and conflict: resolving a puzzle of association and causation

Author

Listed:
  • Christian Almer
  • Stefan Boes

Abstract

There is an ongoing discussion especially among political scientists and economists whether and how climate variability affects civil conflicts and wars in developing countries. Given the predicted climatic changes, several studies argue that increasing temperatures or decreasing precipitation will lead to more conflicts in the future. This paper aims at linking the different strands of the literature by analyzing the causal mechanisms at work. We use short-term weather variability as well as long-term changes in Sub-Saharan Africa and find that climate (change) significantly affects agricultural output, to some extent also GDP, and has no robust direct effects on civil wars. Negative shocks in GDP, however, have the expected fostering effects on civil conflicts.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Almer & Stefan Boes, 2012. "Climate (change) and conflict: resolving a puzzle of association and causation," Diskussionsschriften dp1203, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    • Handle: RePEc:ube:dpvwib:dp1203
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.vwiit.ch/dp/dp1203.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hansen, Lars Peter, 1982. "Large Sample Properties of Generalized Method of Moments Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 1029-1054, July.
    2. Arellano, Manuel & Bover, Olympia, 1995. "Another look at the instrumental variable estimation of error-components models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 29-51, July.
    3. Wooldridge, Jeffrey M., 2005. "Instrumental Variables Estimation With Panel Data," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(4), pages 865-869, August.
    4. Fearon, James D. & Laitin, David D., 2003. "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 97(1), pages 75-90, February.
    5. Fernández-Val, Iván & Vella, Francis, 2011. "Bias corrections for two-step fixed effects panel data estimators," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 163(2), pages 144-162, August.
    6. Carro, Jesus M., 2007. "Estimating dynamic panel data discrete choice models with fixed effects," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 503-528, October.
    7. Blundell, Richard & Bond, Stephen, 1998. "Initial conditions and moment restrictions in dynamic panel data models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 115-143, August.
    8. Christopher Blattman & Edward Miguel, 2010. "Civil War," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(1), pages 3-57, March.
    9. King, Gary & Zeng, Langche, 2001. "Logistic Regression in Rare Events Data," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(2), pages 137-163, January.
    10. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2012. "Temperature Shocks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 66-95, July.
    11. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    12. Solomon M. Hsiang & Kyle C. Meng & Mark A. Cane, 2011. "Civil conflicts are associated with the global climate," Nature, Nature, vol. 476(7361), pages 438-441, August.
    13. Persson, Torsten & Strömberg, David & Kudamatsu, Masayuki, 2012. "Weather and Infant Mortality in Africa," CEPR Discussion Papers 9222, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mengmeng Hao & Jingying Fu & Dong Jiang & Fangyu Ding & Shuai Chen, 2020. "Simulating the Linkages Between Economy and Armed Conflict in India With a Long Short‐Term Memory Algorithm," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(6), pages 1139-1150, June.
    2. Kostadis J. Papaioannou & Michiel de Haas, 2015. "Climate shocks, cash crops and resilience: Evidence from colonial tropical Africa," Working Papers 0076, Utrecht University, Centre for Global Economic History.
    3. Papaioannou, Kostadis J. & de Haas, Michiel, 2017. "Weather Shocks and Agricultural Commercialization in Colonial Tropical Africa: Did Cash Crops Alleviate Social Distress?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 346-365.
    4. Solomon Hsiang & Marshall Burke, 2014. "Climate, conflict, and social stability: what does the evidence say?," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 123(1), pages 39-55, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Almer, Christian & Laurent-Lucchetti, Jérémy & oechslin, Manuel, 2011. "Income shocks and social unrest: theory and evidence," MPRA Paper 34426, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2014. "What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(3), pages 740-798, September.
    3. Vusal Musayev, 2016. "Externalities in Military Spending and Growth: The Role of Natural Resources as a Channel through Conflict," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(3), pages 378-391, June.
    4. Ly Slesman & Ali Kole & Rizgar Abdlkarim Abdlaziz & Ibrahim D. Raheem, 2024. "Taming the Tides of Internal Conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Role of Political Institutions and Natural Resources," Global Journal of Emerging Market Economies, Emerging Markets Forum, vol. 16(2), pages 188-211, May.
    5. Khalifa, Sherin & Petri, Svetlana & Henning, Christian H. C. A., 2020. "If climate change can trigger civil conflict, can good policy trigger peace? Empirical evidence from cross-country panel data," Working Papers of Agricultural Policy WP2020-01, University of Kiel, Department of Agricultural Economics, Chair of Agricultural Policy.
    6. Pigini, Claudia & Bartolucci, Francesco, 2022. "Conditional inference for binary panel data models with predetermined covariates," Econometrics and Statistics, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 83-104.
    7. Farzanegan, Mohammad Reza & Witthuhn, Stefan, 2017. "Corruption and political stability: Does the youth bulge matter?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 47-70.
    8. Edinaldo Tebaldi & Erik Alda, 2017. "Quality of Institutions and Violence Incidence: a Cross-Country Analysis," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 45(3), pages 365-384, September.
    9. Wakako Maekawa & Barış Arı & Theodora-Ismene Gizelis, 2019. "UN involvement and civil war peace agreement implementation," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 178(3), pages 397-416, March.
    10. Yoshitsugu Kitazawa, 2013. "Exploration of dynamic fixed effects logit models from a traditional angle," Discussion Papers 60, Kyushu Sangyo University, Faculty of Economics.
    11. Frédéric Gaspart & Pierre Pecher, 2019. "Ethnic Inclusiveness of the Central State Government and Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 28(2), pages 176-201.
    12. Jean-François Maystadt & Olivier Ecker, 2014. "Extreme Weather and Civil War: Does Drought Fuel Conflict in Somalia through Livestock Price Shocks?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 96(4), pages 1157-1182.
    13. Alessandra Canepa & Fawaz Khaled, 2018. "Housing, Housing Finance and Credit Risk," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-23, May.
    14. Emrah Kocak & Hayriye Hilal Baglitas, 2022. "The path to sustainable municipal solid waste management: Do human development, energy efficiency, and income inequality matter?," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(6), pages 1947-1962, December.
    15. Kjetil Bjorvatn & Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, 2014. "Resource Rents, Power, and Political Stability," CESifo Working Paper Series 4727, CESifo.
    16. Castelló-Climent, Amparo & Mukhopadhyay, Abhiroop, 2013. "Mass education or a minority well educated elite in the process of growth: The case of India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 303-320.
    17. Kampelmann, Stephan & Rycx, François, 2012. "The impact of educational mismatch on firm productivity: Evidence from linked panel data," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 918-931.
    18. Baharumshah, Ahmad Zubaidi & Slesman, Ly & Wohar, Mark E., 2016. "Inflation, inflation uncertainty, and economic growth in emerging and developing countries: Panel data evidence," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 40(4), pages 638-657.
    19. Guglielmo Maria Caporale & Anamaria Diana Sova & Robert Sova, 2024. "The Covid‐19 pandemic and European trade flows: Evidence from a dynamic panel model," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(3), pages 2563-2580, July.
    20. Bertrand, Olivier & Zuniga, Pluvia, 2006. "R&D and M&A: Are cross-border M&A different? An investigation on OECD countries," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 401-423, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Civil conflict; climate change; economic shocks; Africa;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • C36 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Instrumental Variables (IV) Estimation
    • N47 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Africa; Oceania

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ube:dpvwib:dp1203. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Franz Koelliker (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vwibech.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.