Linking social heterogeneity and commodity price shocks to civil conflicts

Abstract

Do exogenous economic shocks promote civil conflict directly? Do they affect all the societies alike? Using a large sample panel dataset, the current approach finds that commodity export prices shocks contribute to civil conflict in socially diversified countries. These findings contribute to the existing body literature linking income to conflict by analyzing not only the effect of commodity price shocks on conflict incidence, rather than onsets, but also by examining the joint effect of ethnicity and religious polarization and fractionalization. Keywords: economic shocks; conflict; polarization; fractionalization; commodity price. JEL classification: D74, O11, O17