Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
7361552 | Journal of Environmental Economics and Management | 2017 | 17 Pages |
Abstract
It is often purported that unusually dry weather conditions provoke small-scale social conflict-riots-by intensifying the competition for water. The present paper explores this hypothesis, using data from Sub-Saharan Africa. We rely on monthly data at the cell level (0.5Ã0.5 degrees), an approach that is tailored to the short-lived and local nature of the phenomenon. Using a drought index to proxy for weather shocks, we find that a one-standard-deviation fall in the index (signaling drier conditions) raises the likelihood of riots in a given cell and month by 8.3%. We further observe that the effect of unusually dry weather conditions is substantially larger in cells with a lower availability of water resources (such as rivers and lakes), a finding that supports the significance of the competition-for-water mechanism.
Related Topics
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Economics and Econometrics
Authors
Christian Almer, Jérémy Laurent-Lucchetti, Manuel Oechslin,