IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v115y2021i2p709-716_25.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do Commodity Price Shocks Cause Armed Conflict? A Meta-Analysis of Natural Experiments

Author

Listed:
  • BLAIR, GRAEME
  • CHRISTENSEN, DARIN
  • RUDKIN, AARON

Abstract

Scholars of the resource curse argue that reliance on primary commodities destabilizes governments: price fluctuations generate windfalls or periods of austerity that provoke or intensify civil conflict. Over 350 quantitative studies test this claim, but prominent results point in different directions, making it difficult to discern which results reliably hold across contexts. We conduct a meta-analysis of 46 natural experiments that use difference-in-difference designs to estimate the causal effect of commodity price changes on armed civil conflict. We show that commodity price changes, on average, do not change the likelihood of conflict. However, there are cross-cutting effects by commodity type. In line with theory, we find price increases for labor-intensive agricultural commodities reduce conflict, while increases in the price of oil, a capital-intensive commodity, provoke conflict. We also find that price increases for lootable artisanal minerals provoke conflict. Our meta-analysis consolidates existing evidence, but also highlights opportunities for future research.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:115:y:2021:i:2:p:709-716_25
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055420000957/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. 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).
    2. McCulloch, Neil & Natalini, Davide & Hossain, Naomi & Justino, Patricia, 2022. "An exploration of the association between fuel subsidies and fuel riots," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    3. Michael Denly & Michael G. Findley & Joelean Hall & Andrew Stravers & James Igoe Walsh, 2022. "Do Natural Resources Really Cause Civil Conflict? Evidence from the New Global Resources Dataset," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 66(3), pages 387-412, April.
    4. 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.
    5. Fetzer, Thiemo, 2023. "Did the policy response to the energy crisis cause crime? Evidence from England," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 662, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    6. 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).
    7. Matthew Stuart & Cindy Yu & David A. Hennessy, 2023. "The Impact of Stocks on Correlations between Crop Yields and Prices and on Revenue Insurance Premiums using Semiparametric Quantile Regression," Papers 2308.11805, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2024.
    8. 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.
    9. Victoire Girard & Teresa Molina-Millán & Guillaume Vic, 2022. "Artisanal mining in Africa," NOVAFRICA Working Paper Series wp2201, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics, NOVAFRICA.
    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. Janus, Thorsten, 2024. "Does export underreporting contribute to the resource curse?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    12. Ioannis Dokas & Georgios Oikonomou & Minas Panagiotidis & Eleftherios Spyromitros, 2023. "Macroeconomic and Uncertainty Shocks’ Effects on Energy Prices: A Comprehensive Literature Review," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(3), pages 1-35, February.
    13. Zhou, Xiaoran & Enilov, Martin & Parhi, Mamata, 2024. "Does oil spin the commodity wheel? Quantile connectedness with a common factor error structure across energy and agricultural markets," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    14. Mathieu Couttenier & Jeremy Laurent-Lucchetti & Lore Vandewalle, 2023. "Inequality and Social Unrest in India," IHEID Working Papers 08-2023, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies.
    15. Nguyen, Minh-Hoang, 2021. "Resource curse - Wikipedia," OSF Preprints 36uyb, Center for Open Science.
    16. Deininger, Klaus & Ali, Daniel Ayalew & Kussul, Nataliia & Shelestov, Andrii & Lemoine, Guido & Yailimova, Hanna, 2023. "Quantifying war-induced crop losses in Ukraine in near real time to strengthen local and global food security," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    17. Bandiera, Antonella, 2021. "Deliberate displacement during conflict: Evidence from Colombia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    18. Michael Christian Lehmann, 2023. "Macroeconomic volatility and anti‐refugee violence in developing countries: Evidence from commodity price shocks," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(2), pages 992-1012, May.
    19. Arce, Moises & Nieto-Matiz, Camilo, 2024. "Mining and violence in Latin America: The state’s coercive responses to anti-mining resistance," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).

    More about this item

    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:cup:apsrev:v:115:y:2021:i:2:p:709-716_25. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    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.