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This paper uses detailed information on the latitude and longitude of conflict events within a set of Sub-Saharan African countries to study the impact of external income shocks on the likelihood of violence. We consider a number of external demand shocks faced by the country or the regions within countries - changes in the world demand of agricultural commodities, financial crises in the partner countries or changes in foreign trade policy - and combine these with information reflecting the natural level of trade openness of the location. We find that (i) within-country, the incidence, intensity and onset of conflicts are generally negatively and significantly correlated with income shocks within locations; (ii) this relationship is significantly weaker for the most remote locations, i.e those located away from the main seaports, (iii) at country-level, we cannot detect any significant effect of these shock on conflict incidence or onset; but (iv) large and longlasting shocks seem to affect the location of conflict outbreaks. In general, our results suggest that external income shocks are important determinants of the intensity and geography of conflicts within countries. However, conflicts tend to start in remote locations which are naturally less affected by foreign shocks, which might explain why these seem to have little effect on conflict onset at the country-level.

European Report on Development The European Report on Development (ERD) is a multiannual process, which is framed within the initiative "Mobilizing European Research for Development Policies". The objective of this initiative is to enhance a European perspective on development issues in the international arena, on the basis of knowledge excellence, innovation and building of common ground between the European research community and policy-makers (Member States and Commission). Moreover, this initiative will improve the visibility of the EU at a global level, help shape the international agenda and feed the EU internal debate on development. The ERD Team Leader is Prof. Giorgia Giovannetti. The multidisciplinary team is based at the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University Institute and is interacting with a broad network of scholars, from both developed and developing countries. ; In the early stage of the 2008-2009 financial crisis, the conventional wisdom was that financial underdevelopment of sub Saharan African economies may have been a bless-ing in disguise because it insulated them from the direct effects of the crisis. This paper argues that this may also make African exporters, dangerously more dependent on the health of financial institutions in countries where they export. In the 2008-2009 financial crisis, we find that African exports to the US have been hit more than other countries. On past financial crises (1976-2002), we find that African exporters are more vulnerable to recessions in partner countries. Hence, African countries seem more affected by the income effect of financial crises. In addition to this income effect, we find that, for the average exporter, the disruption effect due to a financial crisis in the partner country is moderate (a deviation from the gravity predicted trade of around 2 to 8%) and long lasting (around 7 years). We find however that the disruption effect is much larger for African exporters as the fall in trade (relative to gravity) is at least 20% more than for other countries in the aftermath of the crisis. Only a part of the vulnerability of African exports comes from a composition effect as primary exports are hit more than manufacturing exports. We also provide evidence that African countries more dependent on trade finance are hit more badly.

Abstract
This paper shows how ethnic identities may become more salient due to natural resources extraction. We combine individual data on the strength of ethnic—relative to national—identities with geo-localised information on the contours of ethnic homelands, and on the timing and location of mineral resources exploitation in 25 African countries, from 2005 to 2015. Our strategy takes advantage of several dimensions of exposure to resources exploitation: time, spatial proximity and ethnic proximity. We find that the strength of an ethnic group identity increases when mineral resource exploitation in that group's historical homeland intensifies. We argue that this result is at least partly rooted in feelings of relative deprivation associated with the exploitation of the resources. We show that such exploitation has limited positive economic spillovers, especially for members of the indigenous ethnic group; and that the link between mineral resources and the salience of ethnic identities is reinforced among members of powerless ethnic groups and groups with strong baseline identity feelings or living in poorer areas, or areas with a history of conflict. Put together, these findings suggest a new dimension of the natural resource curse: the fragmentation of identities, between ethnic groups and nations.

International audience ; We provide evidence on the link between the policy response to the SARS CoV-2 pandemic and conflicts worldwide. We combine daily information on conflict events and government policy responses to limit the spread of SARS CoV-2 to study how demonstrations and violent events vary following shutdown policies. We use the staggered implementation of restriction policies across countries to identify the dynamic effects in an event study framework. Our results show that imposing a nation-wide shutdown is associated with a reduction in the number of demonstrations, which suggests that public demonstrations are hampered by the rising cost of participation. However, the reduction is short-lived, as the number of demonstrations are back to their pre-restriction levels in two months. In contrast, we observe that the purported increase in mobilization or coordination costs, following the imposition of restrictions, is not followed by a drop of violent events that involve organized armed groups. Instead, we find that the number of events, on average, increases slightly following the implementation of the restriction policies. The rise in violent events is most prominent in poorer countries, with higher levels of polarization, and in authoritarian countries. We discuss the potential channels underlying this heterogeneity.

International audience ; We provide evidence on the link between the policy response to the SARS CoV-2 pandemic and conflicts worldwide. We combine daily information on conflict events and government policy responses to limit the spread of SARS CoV-2 to study how demonstrations and violent events vary following shutdown policies. We use the staggered implementation of restriction policies across countries to identify the dynamic effects in an event study framework. Our results show that imposing a nation-wide shutdown is associated with a reduction in the number of demonstrations, which suggests that public demonstrations are hampered by the rising cost of participation. However, the reduction is short-lived, as the number of demonstrations are back to their pre-restriction levels in two months. In contrast, we observe that the purported increase in mobilization or coordination costs, following the imposition of restrictions, is not followed by a drop of violent events that involve organized armed groups. Instead, we find that the number of events, on average, increases slightly following the implementation of the restriction policies. The rise in violent events is most prominent in poorer countries, with higher levels of polarization, and in authoritarian countries. We discuss the potential channels underlying this heterogeneity.

International audience ; We provide evidence on the link between the policy response to the SARS CoV-2 pandemic and conflicts worldwide. We combine daily information on conflict events and government policy responses to limit the spread of SARS CoV-2 to study how demonstrations and violent events vary following shutdown policies. We use the staggered implementation of restriction policies across countries to identify the dynamic effects in an event study framework. Our results show that imposing a nation-wide shutdown is associated with a reduction in the number of demonstrations, which suggests that public demonstrations are hampered by the rising cost of participation. However, the reduction is short-lived, as the number of demonstrations are back to their pre-restriction levels in two months. In contrast, we observe that the purported increase in mobilization or coordination costs, following the imposition of restrictions, is not followed by a drop of violent events that involve organized armed groups. Instead, we find that the number of events, on average, increases slightly following the implementation of the restriction policies. The rise in violent events is most prominent in poorer countries, with higher levels of polarization, and in authoritarian countries. We discuss the potential channels underlying this heterogeneity.