There is growing evidence that ethnic divisions and conflict experience affect social capital and economic interactions, in both positive and negative ways. We conduct a set of experiments measuring social capital in Kenya between the two largest ethnic groups, the Luo and Kikuyu, who...

There is growing evidence that ethnic divisions and conflict experience affect social capital and economic interactions, in both positive and negative ways. However, recent work has suggested that the experience of electoral violence in Kenya does not correlate with laboratory behavior between...

Social tensions impede social cohesion and public goods provision. They can also be a driving force for more serious conflicts such as civil wars. Surprisingly, however, the emergence of social tensions has only rarely been studied in the literature. In the present contribution a game-theoretic...

We examine how natural resource location, rent sharing and fighting capacities of different groups matter for ethnic conflict. A new type of bargaining failure due to multiple types of potential conflicts (and hence multiple threat points) is identified. The theory predicts conflict to be more...

The overall goal of the report is to increase the capacity of researchers and policy makers to identify comparatively, and across time, how individuals, households and communities are affected by violent conflict. The report provides an extensive overview of existing practices and datasets used...

This paper analyzes the distributive impacts of violent conflicts, which is in contrast to previous literature that has focused on the other direction. We use cross-country panel data for the time period 1960-2005 to estimate war-related changes in income inequality. Our results indicate rising...

Following the wave of democratization during the 1990s, elections are now common in low-income societies. However, these elections are frequently flawed. We investigate the Nigerian general election of 2007, which is to date the largest election held in Africa and one seriously marred by...

Using the synthetic control method of analysis, we provide the first measurements of the direct economic benefits of a unique robust security response to an insurgency. Of all the states affected by Naxalite violence in India, only one state i.e. Andhra Pradesh raised a specially trained and...

This paper provides a comprehensive view of household responses to insecurity by examining chances along the extensive and intensive margins of livelihoods during a conflict. In particular, it examines how insecurity affects both the choice of activities and the composition of associated...