7.03.2015

"Four dozen papers on conflict and fragility in Africa in under 2,000 words"

David Evans' coverage of last month's Annual Bank Conference on Africa is a great overview of some fascinating recent applied research. Highlights:

  • Extreme rain and drought both boost livestock theft in Kenya: raids driven by resource scarcity but also by weather that makes it easy to carry out a raid (Ralston).

  • Drought leads to increased violence against women. When the shock affects income asymmetrically across partners, it is associated with violence for the first time in the marriage (Cools et al.). 

  • Axbard et al. use variation in international mineral prices and within-country time and geographic variation to show that when a mine opens in South Africa, crime doesn’t increase. But you may not want to be around when the mine closes. 

  • “Members of ethnic groups exposed to greater historical missionary activity [in 19th-century Nigeria] express significantly less trust today,” using Afrobarometer trust measures (Okoye).
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