Spatial Spillovers of Violent Conflict

The paper presented in this Mannheim Applied Seminar investigates how the food transportation network and price system propagate effects of violent conflict to distant locations. Conflict along transportation routes during Somalia’s al-Shabaab insurgency significantly increases food prices at markets hundreds of kilometers. Conflict also reduces households' food security, nutrition, health, and education in far-away market areas, and affectedness of households by such far-away attacks amounts to about 30% of that of local violence. Adding more structure to our estimation, the authors further estimate that on average, one attack along the route has the equivalent effect of increasing the transport distance by 12%, that attacks decrease market access, and that a more diversified set of transport routes, as well as targeted security interventions in strategic areas, can strongly alleviate the price effects of violence.