Dominic Rohner
Geneva Graduate Institute
Who wins wars?
Joint with
Jonathan Federle, Moritz Schularick
Venue
IBD Amphi
Îlot Bernard du Bois - Amphithéâtre
AMU - AMSE
5-9 boulevard Maurice Bourdet
13001 Marseille
Date(s)
Monday, June 2 2025| 11:30am to 12:45pm
Contact(s)
Nicolas Clootens: nicolas.clootens[at]univ-amu.fr
Romain Ferrali: romain.ferrali[at]univ-amu.fr
Abstract
Economic resources are often seen as decisive for the outcomes of military conflicts. This paper asks whether "deeper pockets" help win wars. We construct a fine-grained dataset covering more than 700 interstate disputes and rely on exogenous resource price shocks to estimate the causal effect of windfall gains on winning chances in interstate conflicts. We find a statistically significant and quantitatively large impact of windfall gains on winning odds and show that a key channel of transmission is a surge in military spending, after an exogenous increase in government revenues.
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