Climate+and+Civil+War：+Is+the+Relationship+Robust.pdf

NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES CLIMATE AND CIVIL WAR: IS THE RELATIONSHIP ROBUST? Marshall Burke John Dykema David Lobell Edward Miguel Shanker Satyanath Working Paper 16440 /papers/w16440 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 October 2010 We thank Halvard Buhaug for helpful discussions and for sharing his data. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. © 2010 by Marshall Burke, John Dykema, David Lobell, Edward Miguel, and Shanker Satyanath. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. Climate and Civil War: Is the Relationship Robust? Marshall Burke, John Dykema, David Lobell, Edward Miguel, and Shanker Satyanath NBER Working Paper No. 16440 October 2010 JEL No. N47,O55,Q54 ABSTRACT A recent paper by Burke et al. (henceforth “we”) finds a strong historical relationship between warmer- than-average temperatures and the incidence of civil war in Africa (Burke et al. 2009). These findings have recently been challenged by Buhaug (2010) who finds fault with how we controlled for other potential explanatory variables, how we coded civil wars, and with our choice of historical time period and climate datase