scholarly journals The Distributional Dimension of the Resource Curse: Commodity Price Shocks and Income Inequality

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soran Mohtadi ◽  
David Castells-Quintana
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Resource Curse ◽  
Commodity Price ◽  
Price Shocks ◽  
Commodity Price Shocks ◽  
Distributional Dimension

scholarly journals Do Commodity Price Shocks Cause Armed Conflict? A Meta-Analysis of Natural Experiments

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
GRAEME BLAIR ◽  
DARIN CHRISTENSEN ◽  
AARON RUDKIN
Keyword(s):  
Causal Effect ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Resource Curse ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Commodity Price ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Natural Experiments ◽  
Price Changes ◽  
Price Increases ◽  
Commodity Price Shocks

Scholars of the resource curse argue that reliance on primary commodities destabilizes governments: price fluctuations generate windfalls or periods of austerity that provoke or intensify civil conflict. Over 350 quantitative studies test this claim, but prominent results point in different directions, making it difficult to discern which results reliably hold across contexts. We conduct a meta-analysis of 46 natural experiments that use difference-in-difference designs to estimate the causal effect of commodity price changes on armed civil conflict. We show that commodity price changes, on average, do not change the likelihood of conflict. However, there are cross-cutting effects by commodity type. In line with theory, we find price increases for labor-intensive agricultural commodities reduce conflict, while increases in the price of oil, a capital-intensive commodity, provoke conflict. We also find that price increases for lootable artisanal minerals provoke conflict. Our meta-analysis consolidates existing evidence, but also highlights opportunities for future research.

Rebel Primary Commodity Markets, Price Shocks, and Supplier Victimization

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chelsea L Estancona
Keyword(s):  
Commodity Price ◽  
Commodity Markets ◽  
Price Shocks ◽  
Supplier Relationships ◽  
Primary Commodity ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Commodity Price Shocks ◽  
Reputational Costs ◽  
Municipal Level ◽  
Do So

Abstract Rebel organizations often benefit from the sale of primary commodities. However, producing these commodities may require labor from noncombatants. Rebels provide security and payment to civilian suppliers, but their ability to do so depends on consistent profits. How, then, do price shocks to labor-intensive primary commodities undermine rebel–supplier relationships? I hypothesize that negative commodity price shocks lead cash-strapped rebels to ensure suppliers’ loyalty by substituting coercion for positive incentives. Conversely, states seek to limit rapid increases in rebels’ profit while avoiding the reputational costs of civilian victimization. Thus, victimization of rebel suppliers from groups such as pro-government paramilitaries is hypothesized to increase after positive commodity price shocks. I test these hypotheses with a new dataset covering 1999–2007 that combines monthly US STRIDE (System to Retrieve Information from Drug Evidence) data on cocaine price with municipal-level data from the Colombian Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica about the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) and paramilitary groups’ use of civilian victimization.

scholarly journals Breaks, trends and unit roots in commodity prices: a robust investigation

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Atanu Ghoshray ◽  
Mohitosh Kejriwal ◽  
Mark Wohar
Keyword(s):  
Unit Root ◽  
Structural Breaks ◽  
Commodity Prices ◽  
Unit Roots ◽  
Commodity Price ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Price Shocks ◽  
Price Series ◽  
Commodity Price Shocks ◽  
Trend Breaks

AbstractThis paper empirically examines the time series behavior of primary commodity prices relative to manufactures with reference to the nature of their underlying trends and the persistence of shocks driving the price processes. The direction and magnitude of the trends are assessed employing a set of econometric techniques that is robust to the nature of persistence in the commodity price shocks, thereby obviating the need for unit root pretesting. Specifically, the methods allow consistent estimation of the number and location of structural breaks in the trend function as well as facilitate the distinction between trend breaks and pure level shifts. Further, a new set of powerful unit root tests is applied to determine whether the underlying commodity price series can be characterized as difference or trend stationary processes. These tests treat breaks under the unit root null and the trend stationary alternative in a symmetric fashion thereby alleviating the procedures from spurious rejection problems and low power issues that plague most existing procedures. Relative to the extant literature, we find more evidence in favor of trend stationarity suggesting that real commodity price shocks are primarily of a transitory nature. We conclude with a discussion of the policy implications of our results.

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