Internal conflicts and shocks: A narrative meta-analysis

Abstract

Do variations in local incomes influence peace and conflict in low- and middle-income countries? The present meta-regression analysis contributes to answering this question by delving into the narratives that researchers use to qualify how various shocks affect conflict risk through channels implicitly linked to income. After examining 2,464 subnational estimates from 64 recent empirical studies, we find that several publication biases related to authors’ methodological choices influence our understanding of this phenomenon. Importantly, studies that fail to uncover empirical effects that conform to researchers’ expectations on the theoretical mechanisms are less likely to be published. 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 article opens avenues for further study on the granular observed heterogeneity in the literature, particularly focusing on the conditional aspects of how shocks and conflicts are measured and the geographical coverage, among others.