Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 117, Issue 4, Pages 1935-1940Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1914829117
Keywords
violence; agriculture; rainfall; income shock; microeconomic theory
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation Coupled Natural Systems Human program [1824951]
- ICER
- Directorate For Geosciences [1824951] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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A growing empirical literature associates climate anomalies with increased risk of violent conflict. This association has been portrayed as a bellwether of future societal instability as the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events are predicted to increase. This paper investigates the theoretical foundation of this claim. A seminal microeconomic model of opportunity costs-a mechanism often thought to drive climate-conflict relationships- is extended by considering realistic changes in the distribution of climate-dependent agricultural income. Results advise caution in using empirical associations between short-run climate anomalies and conflicts to predict the effect of sustained shifts in climate regimes: Although war occurs in bad years, conflict may decrease if agents expect more frequent bad years. Theory suggests a nonmonotonic relation between climate variability and conflict that emerges as agents adapt and adjust their behavior to the new income distribution. We identify 3 measurable statistics of the income distribution that are each unambiguously associated with conflict likelihood. Jointly, these statistics offer a unique signature to distinguish opportunity costs from competing mechanisms that may relate climate anomalies to conflict.
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