Working Paper
24

Foreign Aid and the Intensity of Violent Armed Conflict

Date Published

May 2, 2016

Authors

Daniel Strandow, Michael G. Findley, Joseph K. Young

Publisher

Citation

Strandow, Daniel, Michael G. Findley, and Joseph K. Young. 2016. Foreign Aid and the Intensity of Violent Armed Conflict. AidData Working Paper #24. Williamsburg, VA: AidData at William & Mary.

Update: A revised version of this paper has been published in International Studies Quarterly.

Abstract

Does foreign aid increase or decrease violence during ongoing wars? Although answers to this question are almost surely found at local levels, most research on this topic is performed at much higher levels of analysis, most notably the country level. We investigate the impact of foreign aid on the intensity of violence during ongoing armed conflict at a microlevel. We examine the influence that concentrated aid funding has on political violence within war zones that are contested among combatants. Using new geographically coded data within a matching design, we find that multiple measures of funding concentration are associated with increased military fatalities, but not with civilian fatalities.

Featured Authors

Daniel Strandow

Daniel Strandow

PhD candidate at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University

Mike Findley

Mike Findley

Assistant Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin

Joseph Young

Joseph Young

Associate Professor at the School of Public Affairs and School of International Service at American University

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