Internal Conflicts and Shocks. A Narrative Meta-Analysis

Do income shocks locally affect internal conflicts? To address this question, this paper employs a meta-regression analysis of 2,464 infranational estimates from 64 recent empirical studies on conflicts and income-related shocks in developing countries. After accounting for publication selection bias, the analysis finds that, on average, income increasing shocks in the agriculture sector are negatively associated with the local risk of conflict. Nonetheless, the analysis finds no average effect of income-decreasing shocks in the agriculture sector or income-increasing shocks in the extractive sector on the local risk of conflict. The paper also shows that studies that fail to uncover empirical effects that conform to researchers’ expectations on the theoretical mechanisms are less likely to be published. Differences in the geographical area of study, the choice of control variables, and the way shocks are measured substantially explain the heterogeneity among estimates in the literature.