Burke, Marshall, Joel Ferguson, Solomon Hsiang, and Edward Miguel. 2024. “Will Wealth Weaken Weather Wars?” AEA Papers and Proceedings 114: 65–69.
DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20241055

This study estimates the moderating impact of economic development on climate-conflict linkages during 1989–2019 in Africa, the world region that in recent decades has experienced the most armed conflict. We build a spatially disaggregated dataset that merges multiple decades of georeferenced data on climate shocks and conflict events with both local- and national-level measures of economic development to help shed light on the relative importance of local opportunity costs versus state capacity. We find that higher national GDP per capita greatly dampens the conflict risk associated with higher temperatures, suggesting that enhanced state capacity is a key factor.

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