Economic foundation of conflicts in the Middle East

Nasser Elkanj, Partha Gangopadhyay

    Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

    Abstract

    Violent conflicts have become one of the major concerns of modern nation states. Regardless of their political, social, and economic conjunctures, nations are increasingly exposed to the risk of conflicts. Conflicts are generally categorized as ‘‘major’’ and ‘‘minor’’ based on the level of intensity and the number of casualties. The Middle East has experienced a dramatic increase in the number of conflicts since the early 1990s. In this chapter we examine the causes that triggered unprecedented changes in conflicts by using a panel of conflict estimates for 10 Middle Eastern nations for the period 1963–1999. The fixed effects model is used to control for unobservable country-specific effects that result in a missing variable bias in cross-sectional studies. More importantly, the fixed effects model is chosen since the main goal of this study is to investigate what factors have caused statistically significant changes in conflicts over time within nations rather than to explain variation in conflicts across these nations. On the basis of the panel data, we explain the roles of inequality, inflation, growth, military spending, foreign direct investment, and remittances in the surge in conflicts in the Middle East.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationFrontiers of Peace Economics and Peace Science
    EditorsManas Chatterji, Chen Bo, Rameshwar Misra
    Place of PublicationU.K.
    PublisherEmerald
    Pages153-167
    Number of pages15
    ISBN (Electronic)9780857247025
    ISBN (Print)9780857247018
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2011

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Economic foundation of conflicts in the Middle East'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this