2015/09/14 by Joan Esteban, Massimo Morelli, Dominic Rohner · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Chemistry · #Political Conflict and Governance #Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence #Natural Resources and Economic Development #Economic rent #Polarization (electrochemistry) #Natural resource #Productivity #Economics #Ethnic group #Political science #Microeconomics #Economic growth #Chemistry #Law
paper · doi:10.1086/682584
openalex publication_date 2015/09/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
We provide a model of conflict and mass killing decisions to identify the key variables and situations that make mass killings more likely to occur. We predict that mass killings are most likely in countries with large amounts of natural resource rents, polarization, institutional constraints regarding rent sharing, and low productivity of labor. The role of resources such as oil, gas, and diamonds and other key determinants of mass killings is confirmed by our empirical results based on country-level as well as ethnic group–level analysis.