Trade Liberalization, Economic Activity, and Political Violence in the Global South: Evidence from Ptas

Faraway, so close: the impact of the Russia–Ukraine war on political violence in Asian countries

“…At the same time, an increase in crop prices could increase the number of political violent events. This is because of the rapacity effect and the asymmetric distribution of the gains from the increased value of crop production (McGuirk and Burke 2020; Amodio et al 2023). In fact, an increase in wheat price makes the current and future production of this crop more valuable, and as a consequence, the appropriation of this output becomes attractive for combats and terrorists.…”

“…The more the crop is taxable the more this mechanism is likely to become relevant. Amodio et al (2023) document that trade-liberalization-induced increase in economic activity leads to more political violence in areas producing less labour-intensive crops or crops that are locally consumed. with a higher probability of conflict in cells that produce those crops.…”

“…It supplies two alternative projections of potential crop yields: one is based on agroecological constraints, which could potentially reflect human intervention, and one is only based on agroclimatic conditions, which are arguably unaffected by human intervention. We consider potential yields based on the scenario considering agroclimatic conditions under rain-fed low-input agriculture.7 These data have already been largely used in the economics literature Donaldson 2012, 2016;Amodio et al 2023).…”

“…This measure is similar to the one used inAmodio et al (2023) to study the effects of trade liberalization episodes on local-level economic activity and political violence.…”