Poverty and Civil War: Revisiting the Evidence
研究发现人均收入与内战的相关性是虚假的，加入国家固定效应或历史变量（如欧洲定居者死亡率、1500年人口密度）后，贫困对内战的影响消失，对发展经济学和冲突研究学者有参考价值。
Previous research has interpreted the correlation between per capita income and civil war as evidence that poverty is a main determinantof conflict. In this paper, we find that the relationship between poverty and civil war is spurious and is accounted for by historical phenomena that jointly determine income evolution and conflict. In particular, the statistical association between poverty and civil wars disappears once we include country fixed effects. Also, using cross-section data for 1960 to 2000, we find that once historical variables like European settler mortality rates and the population density in 1500 are included in civil war regressions, poverty does not have an effect on civil wars. These results are confirmed using longer time series from 1825 to 2000.