What is the political legacy of violent conflict? This paper presents evidence for a link between war, violence and increased individual political participation and leadership among former combatants and victims of violence, and uses this link to understand the deeper determinants of individual...

Civil wars have afflicted two-thirds of African nations, drawing up to a third of male youth into armed groups. Little is known, however, about the long term effects of military participation due to a lack of data and potential sample selection: recruits are usually self-selected and screened,...

We investigate one of the world’s most pernicious forms of exploitation: child soldiering. Most theories can be captured by a principal-agent model that incorporates punishments, indoctrination, and age-varying productivity. For rebel leaders, we show it is almost always optimal to coerce...

Data from Uganda challenge conventional notions about the role of females during and after war. Women and girls recruited by the LRA play active roles and are not passive victims. We show how LRA treatment of females especially strict rules against civilian rape and the use of forced marriage...

Can cash transfers promote employment and reduce poverty in rural Africa? Will lower youth unemployment and poverty reduce the risk of social instability? We experimentally evaluate one of Uganda’s largest development programs, which provided thousands of young people nearly unconditional,...

Ethnicity and citizenship issues have been among the contributing causes of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over the past decades. These identity issues are exacerbated by the large-scale migration of people to and from the DRC and neighbouring Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda, both...

Since Collier and Hoeffler (1998, 2004), it has been supported that inequality, measured at national level, does not affect the risk of conflict. Such a result has been much debated in the literature. Based on a revisited theoretical framework, the purpose of the paper is to explore the role of...

Despite a significant expansion of the literature on conflicts and fragility of states, only a few systematic attempts have been made to link the theoretical literature on social conflicts to the available micro-level information about the people who are involved in these conflicts. We address...

In an ethnically polarized country, does aversion towards inter-ethnic inequity induce citizens to vote for a party promoting an equitable allocation of national resources among ethnic groups? We base our analysis on a survey that we conducted among 331 students from Addis Ababa University. We...