Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP8055
Authors: Maarten Bosker; Joppe de Ree
Abstract: Civil wars critically hinder a country's development process. This paper shows that civil wars can also have severe international consequences. Anecdotal evidence highlights that civil wars sometimes spill over international boundaries. Using a more rigorous econometric approach we provide evidence that conflict spillovers are indeed quantitatively very important. Also, they are context dependent. Ethnicity in particular plays a key role in the spread of civil war. Only ethnic civil wars spill over, and only along ethnic lines. We do not find evidence that poor, ethnically heterogenous, or less populous countries are more or less susceptible to spillovers. Ethnic links to a neighbor at ethnic civil war increase the probability of an outbreak of ethnic civil war at home by 6 percentage points.
Keywords: Civil War; Conflict Spillovers; Ethnicity
JEL Codes: F5; N40; O19
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Presence of ethnic links to a neighboring country experiencing civil war (F51) | Probability of ethnic civil war onset at home (F51) |
| Neighbor at war (D74) | Likelihood of civil war onset (D74) |
| Characteristics of the neighboring conflict and presence of ethnic ties (D74) | Spillover effect on civil war onset (D74) |
| Domestic circumstances (J12) | Susceptibility to spillovers (F69) |