Income Shocks and Linguistic Diversity: Determinants of the Number of Violent Actors

Details

Supervisors

Joseph Flavian Gomes

Faculty

Faculté des sciences économiques, sociales, politiques et de communication

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences économiques, orientation générale, à finalité approfondie

Abstract

I combine georeferenced information on violent actors with two differen types of income shocks and a measure of linguistic diversity at the spatial resolution of 0.5 x 0.5 degree latitude longitude for all the African continent during the period 1997-2007. I find that the effect of income shocks on the number of violent actors varies with different levels of linguistic diversity. Two shocks are used: an adverse economic shock, a rainfall variation, and a positive shock, a change in the price of minerals. A rainfall shock reduces the number of violent actors in high fractionalized cells. Instead, a shock on the mineral prices increases the number of violent actors in high fractionalized cells. I provide evidence of the importance of linguistic diversity on the relationship between income and conflict and the diferent relationships between linguistic diversity and two different types of shocks.