Income Shocks and Conflict: Evidence from Nigeria

Abstract This paper examines the relationship between income shocks and conflict across Nigerian states over 2000s. By matching consumption, production, commodity prices data, analysis captures two opposite channels linking agricultural price changes to conflict. Consistently with opportunity cost mechanism of conflict, increases commodities produced by households have a conflict-reducing effect, while is true for consumed commodities. The net impact turns out be inducing in contrast most related literature that focuses on production side shocks. These results underscore importance modelling both consumption effects get consistent estimates