Université de Lausanne
Faculté des HEC
Département d'économétrie et d'économie politique

Cahier de recherches économiques du DEEP No. 13.06

Francesco Caselli, Massimo Morelli and Dominic Rohner

The Geography of Inter-State Resource Wars

April 2013

Abstract
We establish a theoretical as well as empirical framework to assess the role of resource endowments and their geographic location for inter-State conflict. The main predictions of the theory are that conflict tends to be more likely when at least one country has natural resources; when the resources in the resource-endowed country are closer to the border; and, in the case where both countries have natural resources, when the resources are located asymmetrically vis-a-vis the border. We test these predictions on a novel dataset featuring oilfield distances from bilateral borders. The empirical analysis shows that the presence and location of oil are significant and quantitatively important predictors of inter-State conflicts after WW2.

Keywords: Conflict; Interstate War; Border Disputes; Natural Resources; Oil; Asymmetry; Geography

JEL classification: D74; C72; F51; Q34