Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/298080 
Year of Publication: 
2024
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Working Paper No. 2024/30
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
We show that the Russia-Ukraine-war-induced changes in the international price of wheat affected political violence in Asia. Using data from 13 countries and more than four million cell-level observations, we show that a higher wheat price increases political violence in areas that are more suitable to produce that crop. We interpret this evidence as consistent with a rapacity effect being at play: the higher value of agricultural output increases the incentive to violently appropriate it. Our result is robust to a number of falsification and robustness tests. The effect is heterogeneous across countries and cell types: in line with our interpretation of the empirical findings, the effect is larger in countries that are net exporters of wheat and in cells that are rural. We also show that a higher price of wheat increases political violence more in countries that are low-income, fragile, and characterized by the presence of anti-government or terrorist groups, indicating that a higher value of crop production is more likely to fuel violence in areas that are poor or not politically stable.
Subjects: 
Russia-Ukraine war
commodity prices
agricultural trade
agricultural suitability
rapacity effect
JEL: 
F13
F14
Q17
Q54
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-9267-488-5
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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