IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/wp-2024-30.html

Faraway, so close: the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on political violence in Asian countries

Author

Listed:
  • Michele Di Maio
  • Patricia Justino
  • Valerio Leone Sciabolazza
  • Cecilia Nardi

Abstract

We show that the Russia-Ukraine-war-induced changes in the international price of wheat affected political violence in Asia. Using data from 13 countries and more than four million cell-level observations, we show that a higher wheat price increases political violence in areas that are more suitable to produce that crop. We interpret this evidence as consistent with a rapacity effect being at play: the higher value of agricultural output increases the incentive to violently appropriate it. Our result is robust to a number of falsification and robustness tests.

Suggested Citation

  • Michele Di Maio & Patricia Justino & Valerio Leone Sciabolazza & Cecilia Nardi, 2024. "Faraway, so close: the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on political violence in Asian countries," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2024-30, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2024-30
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/Working-paper/PDF/wp2024-30-impact-Russia-Ukraine-war-political-violence-Asian-countries.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eoin McGuirk & Marshall Burke, 2020. "The Economic Origins of Conflict in Africa," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(10), pages 3940-3997.
    2. Blair, Graeme & Christensen, Darin & Rudkin, Aaron, 2021. "Do Commodity Price Shocks Cause Armed Conflict? A Meta-Analysis of Natural Experiments," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 115(2), pages 709-716, May.
    3. Samuel Bazzi & Christopher Blattman, 2014. "Economic Shocks and Conflict: Evidence from Commodity Prices," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(4), pages 1-38, October.
    4. Benjamin Crost & Joseph H Felter, 2020. "Export Crops and Civil Conflict," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(3), pages 1484-1520.
    5. Giorgio Chiovelli & Francesco Amodio & Leonardo Baccini & Michele Di Maio, 2023. "Trade Liberalization, Economic Activity, and Political Violence in the Global South: Evidence from PTAs," Documentos de Trabajo/Working Papers 2302, Facultad de Ciencias Empresariales y Economia. Universidad de Montevideo..
    6. Mathieu Couttenier & Raphael Soubeyran, 2014. "Drought and Civil War In Sub‐Saharan Africa," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 124(575), pages 201-244, March.
      • Couttenier, Mathieu & Hofstetter, Annie & Soubeyran, Raphael, 2013. "Drought and civil war in sub-Saharan Africa," INRAE Sciences Sociales, Institut national de recherche pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement (INRAE), Departement Sciences Sociales, Agriculture et Alimentation, Espace et Environnement (SAE2), vol. 2013, pages 1-6, March.
    7. Francesco Amodio & Leonardo Baccini & Giorgio Chiovelli & Michele Di Maio, 2024. "Trade liberalization, economic activity and political violence in the Global South: evidence from PTAs," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 39(118), pages 275-322.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Laville,Camille & Mandon,Pierre Jean-Claude, 2023. "Internal Conflicts and Shocks. A Narrative Meta-Analysis," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10315, The World Bank.
    2. Millán-Quijano, Jaime & Pulgarín, Sebastián, 2023. "Oiling up the field. Forced internal displacement and the expansion of palm oil in Colombia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    3. David Ubilava & Justin V. Hastings & Kadir Atalay, 2023. "Agricultural windfalls and the seasonality of political violence in Africa," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 105(5), pages 1309-1332, October.
    4. Alex Dickson & Ian A. MacKenzie & Petros G. Sekeris, 2022. "The role of markets on resource conflicts," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 124(3), pages 677-708, July.
    5. Ubilava, David & Atalay, Kadir & Hastings, Justin V, 2021. "Commodity Price Shocks and the Seasonality of Conflict," Working Papers 2021-03, University of Sydney, School of Economics, revised Jul 2021.
    6. Camille Laville, 2018. "The econometrical causal analysis of internal conflicts: The evolutions of a growing literature [L’analyse économétrique des conflits internes par l’approche causale : les évolutions d’une littérat," Working Papers hal-01940461, HAL.
    7. Kai Gehring & Paul Schaudt, 2023. "Insuring Peace: Index-Based Livestock Insurance, Droughts, and Conflict," CESifo Working Paper Series 10423, CESifo.
    8. Crost, Benjamin & Felter, Joseph H. & Yamasaki, Yoko, 2025. "Labor intensity, market structure, and the effect of economic activities on civil conflict," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    9. David Ubilava, 2026. "Climate, crops, and postharvest conflict," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 108(1), pages 3-27, January.
    10. Maleke Fourati & Victoire Girard & Jeremy Laurent-Lucchetti, 2021. "Sexual violence as a weapon of war," NOVAFRICA Working Paper Series wp2103, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics, NOVAFRICA.
    11. Humphreys, Aaron & Ubilava, David, 2025. "Prices and Protests: Evidence from Maize Markets Across Africa," 2025 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2025, Denver, CO 361190, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    12. Alex Dickson & Ian A MacKenzie & Petros G Sekeris, 2018. "The role of markets and preferences on resource conflicts," Working Papers 1819, University of Strathclyde Business School, Department of Economics.
    13. Camille Laville, 2018. "The econometrical causal analysis of internal conflicts: The evolutions of a growing literature [L’analyse économétrique des conflits internes par l’approche causale : les évolutions d’une littérat," CERDI Working papers hal-01940461, HAL.
    14. Antonio Ciccone, 2018. "International commodity prices and civil war outbreak: new evidence for Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond," Economics Working Papers 1596, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    15. Mary, Sebastien, 2022. "Dams mitigate the effect of rainfall shocks on Hindus-Muslims riots," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    16. Bharati, Tushar & Jetter, Michael & Malik, Muhammad Nauman, 2024. "Types of communications technology and civil conflict," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    17. Emilio Depetris-Chauvin & Ömer Özak, 2023. "(De facto) Historical Ethnic Borders and Contemporary Conflict in Africa," Departmental Working Papers 2303, Southern Methodist University, Department of Economics.
    18. Fabien Candau & Tchapo Gbandi & Geoffroy Guepie, 2022. "Beyond the income effect of international trade on ethnic wars in Africa," Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(3), pages 517-534, July.
    19. repec:osf:osfxxx:k76mt_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Nicolas Berman & Mathieu Couttenier & Raphael Soubeyran, 2021. "Fertile Ground for Conflict," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(1), pages 82-127.
    21. Dominic Rohner & Mathias Thoenig, 2021. "The Elusive Peace Dividend of Development Policy: From War Traps to Macro Complementarities," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 13(1), pages 111-131, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:unu:wpaper:wp-2024-30. 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: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.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.