IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/16461.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Understanding Transitory Rainfall Shocks, Economic Growth and Civil Conflict

Author

Listed:
  • Edward Miguel
  • Shanker Satyanath

Abstract

Miguel, Satyanath and Sergenti (2004) use rainfall variation as an instrument to show that economic growth is negatively related to civil conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. In the reduced form regression they find that higher rainfall is associated with less conflict. Ciccone (2010) claims that this conclusion is 'erroneous' and argues that higher rainfall levels are actually linked to more conflict. In this paper we show that the results in Ciccone's paper are based on incorrect STATA code, outdated conflict data, a weak first stage regression and a questionable application of the GMM estimator. Leaving aside these data and econometric issues, Ciccone's surprising results do not survive obvious robustness checks. We therefore conclude that Ciccone's main claims are largely incorrect and reconfirm the original result by Miguel, Satyanath and Sergenti (2004), finding that adverse economic growth shocks, driven by falling rainfall, increases the likelihood of civil conflict in sub-Saharan Africa.

Suggested Citation

  • Edward Miguel & Shanker Satyanath, 2010. "Understanding Transitory Rainfall Shocks, Economic Growth and Civil Conflict," NBER Working Papers 16461, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16461
    Note: EEE POL
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w16461.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Elias Papaioannou & Gregorios Siourounis, 2008. "Democratisation and Growth," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(532), pages 1520-1551, October.
    2. James H. Stock & Motohiro Yogo, 2002. "Testing for Weak Instruments in Linear IV Regression," NBER Technical Working Papers 0284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Wilson, Sven E. & Butler, Daniel M., 2007. "A Lot More to Do: The Sensitivity of Time-Series Cross-Section Analyses to Simple Alternative Specifications," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(2), pages 101-123, April.
    4. Jean-Marie Dufour, 1997. "Some Impossibility Theorems in Econometrics with Applications to Structural and Dynamic Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(6), pages 1365-1388, November.
    5. Nickell, Stephen J, 1981. "Biases in Dynamic Models with Fixed Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(6), pages 1417-1426, November.
    6. Judson, Ruth A. & Owen, Ann L., 1999. "Estimating dynamic panel data models: a guide for macroeconomists," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 9-15, October.
    7. Edward Miguel & Shanker Satyanath & Ernest Sergenti, 2004. "Economic Shocks and Civil Conflict: An Instrumental Variables Approach," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(4), pages 725-753, August.
    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. Odusola, Ayodele & Abidoye, Babatunde, 2015. "Effects of Temperature and Rainfall Shocks on Economic Growth in Africa," UNDP Africa Research Discussion Papers 267028, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
    2. Giorgio d’Agostino & John Paul Dunne & Luca Pieroni, 2019. "Military Expenditure, Endogeneity and Economic Growth," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(5), pages 509-524, July.
    3. Achim Ahrens, 2015. "Civil conflicts in Africa: Climate, economic shocks, nighttime lights and spill-over effects," SEEC Discussion Papers 1501, Spatial Economics and Econometrics Centre, Heriot Watt University.
    4. Berman, Eli & Matanock, Aila, 2015. "The Empiricists' Insurgency," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt5zs4h0sh, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
    5. Giorgio d'Agostino & J Paul Dunne & Luca Pieroni, 2016. "How much does military spending affect growth? Causal estimates from the World's non-rich countries," SALDRU Working Papers 196, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.

    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. Daron Acemoglu & Suresh Naidu & Pascual Restrepo & James A. Robinson, 2019. "Democracy Does Cause Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(1), pages 47-100.
    2. Felbermayr, Gabriel & Gröschl, Jasmin, 2014. "Naturally negative: The growth effects of natural disasters," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 92-106.
    3. Madsen, Jakob B. & Raschky, Paul A. & Skali, Ahmed, 2015. "Does democracy drive income in the world, 1500–2000?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 175-195.
    4. Ethan Ilzetzki & Carlos A. Vegh, 2008. "Procyclical Fiscal Policy in Developing Countries: Truth or Fiction?," NBER Working Papers 14191, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Roberto Ezcurra & Beatriz Manotas, 2017. "Is there a link between globalisation and civil conflict?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(12), pages 2592-2610, December.
    6. Huang, Yongfu, 2010. "Political Institutions and Financial Development: An Empirical Study," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(12), pages 1667-1677, December.
    7. Jasmin Katrin Gröschl, 2013. "Gravity Model Applications and Macroeconomic Perspectives," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 48.
    8. Braunfels, Elias, 2014. "How do Political and Economic Institutions Affect Each Other?," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 19/2014, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    9. Ghazal Bayanpourtehrani & Kevin Sylwester, 2013. "Democracy and Female Labor Force Participation: An Empirical Examination," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 112(3), pages 749-762, July.
    10. Wilson, Sven E., 2011. "Chasing Success: Health Sector Aid and Mortality," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(11), pages 2032-2043.
    11. Corduneanu-Huci, Cristina & Dorsch, Michael T. & Maarek, Paul, 2021. "The politics of experimentation: Political competition and randomized controlled trials," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 1-21.
    12. Dirks, Maximilian & Schmidt, Torsten, 2023. "The relationship between political instability and economic growth in advanced economies: Empirical evidence from a panel VAR and a dynamic panel FE-IV analysis," Ruhr Economic Papers 1000, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    13. Petar Peshev, 2021. "Analyzing CFD Retail Investors' Performance in a Post MiFID II Environment," Economic Studies journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 4, pages 53-73.
    14. Yongfu Huang, 2005. "Will political liberalisation bring about financial development?," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 05/578, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    15. Andreas Assiotis, 2013. "Does Democratization Spur Growth? An Examination over Time and Space," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 04-2013, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    16. Eicher, Theo S. & Schreiber, Till, 2010. "Structural policies and growth: Time series evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 169-179, January.
    17. 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.
    18. De Ãvila, Diego Romero, 2003. "Finance and growth in the EU: new evidence from the liberalisation and harmonisation of the banking industry," Working Paper Series 266, European Central Bank.
    19. Alexander Klemm & Stefan Parys, 2012. "Empirical evidence on the effects of tax incentives," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 19(3), pages 393-423, June.
    20. Zhao, Xueting & Burnett, J. Wesley & Lacombe, Donald J., 2014. "Province-level Convergence of China CO2 Emission Intensity," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 169403, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • N47 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Africa; Oceania
    • O55 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Africa
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    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:nbr:nberwo:16461. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.