Recent literature in the political economy of civil war has pointed to the importance of (changes) in the economic environment for the understanding of conflict dynamics. Three channels, negative income shocks, the presence of exportable commodities and indiscriminate violence inflicted on...

The regularity with which peace deals break down and civil wars resume is well established. This briefing looks at the factors that drive violent conflicts, and the factors that may undermine peace deals, including those brokered and supported by international third parties. For peace to last,...

This paper explores the micro-foundations of conflict generation and persistence within the traditional greed and grievance non-cooperative set up between a government and a rebel group. We expand the traditional model in various ways. First, we allow for the reaction curves of both parties in...

This paper challenges the idea that farmers revert to subsistence farming when confronted with violence from civil war. While there is an emerging macroeconomic consensus that wars are detrimental to development, we find contrasting microeconomic evidence. Using several rounds of (panel) data at...

We analyse the effect of civil war on household welfare. Using Burundian panel data for the 1998-2007 period in which we re-interviewed original as well as newly formed households (split-offs), we show that headcount poverty decreased by 3.5 % points when split-off households are taken into...