Friday, October 31, 2008  Does poverty cause civil war?  Not
necessarily, according to this column by Simeon Djankov and
Marta Reynal-Querol. It is generally argued that poverty is one
of the causes of civil war. One corollary to this argument is
that to avert civil war, poverty should be reduced first. The
authors argue that this line of argument banks on the findings
of two major studies by Fearon and Laitin and Collier and
Hoeffler.  They argue that this line of argument could be
accounted for by historical phenomena that jointly determine
income evolution and conflict in the post-WWII era. Poverty and
civil war could be driven by the same determinants (like
colonial history), some of which are missed by in the typical
econometric specifications.    The authors not only look at the
relationship between poverty and civil war in recent decades but
also go back to history (from 1825 to 2000) and account for
historical variables, which they include in their civil war
regression. They find that poverty does not