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Armed conflict within nations has had disastrous humanitarian consequences throughout much of the world. Here we undertake the first comprehensive examination of the potential impact of global climate change on armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. We find strong historical linkages between civil war and temperature in Africa, with warmer years leading to significant increases in the likelihood of war. When combined with climate model projections of future temperature trends, this historical response to temperature suggests a roughly 54% increase in armed conflict incidence by 2030, or an additional 393,000 battle deaths if future wars are as deadly as recent wars. Our results suggest an urgent need to reform African governments' and foreign aid donors' policies to deal with rising temperatures.civil conflict ͉ climate change

We exploit the recent declassification of CIA documents and examine whether there is evidence of US power being used to influence countries' decisions regarding international trade. We measure US influence using a newly constructed annual panel of CIA interventions aimed at installing and supporting leaders during the Cold War. Our presumption is that the US had greater influence over foreign leaders that were installed and backed by the CIA. We show that following CIA interventions there was an

Quantitative estimates of the impacts of climate change on economic outcomes are an important input to public policy. We show that the vast majority of existing estimates fail to account for well-established uncertainty in future temperature and rainfall changes, leading to potentially misleading projections. We re-examine seven well-cited studies and show that accounting for climate uncertainty leads to a much larger range of projected climate impacts and a greater likelihood of "worst-case" outcomes, an important policy parameter. Incorporating climate uncertainty into future economic impact assessments will be critical for providing the best possible information on potential impacts. JEL codes: Q51, Q54, O1 Acknowledgements: We thank seminar participants at U.C. Berkeley, two anonymous referees and the editor (David Lee) for useful comments. All errors remain our own.

Social capital is often associated with desirable political and economic outcomes. This paper connects a growing literature on the "dark side" of social capital with institutional change. We examine the downfall of democracy in interwar Germany. Using new data on Nazi Party entry in a cross-section of cities, we show that dense networks of civic associations such as bowling clubs, choirs, and animal breeders went hand-in-hand with a more rapid rise of the Nazi Party. Towns with one standard deviation higher association density saw at least one-third faster entry. All types of associations -veteran associations and non-military clubs, "bridging" and "bonding" associations -positively predict NS Party entry. Party membership, in turn, predicts electoral success. These results suggest that social capital aided the rise of the Nazi movement that ultimately destroyed Germany's first democracy. We also show that the effects of social capital were more important in the starting phase of the Nazi movement, and in towns less sympathetic to its message.