Christopher Blair

Our article on civilian harm and military legitimacy is now available at @iojournal.bsky.social. We believe it has timely implications for events playing out now in the Middle East and beyond.

From North Carolina to Northern Iraq, working with Jon and Mara has been a truly rewarding experience!

STAGGERING: This new study of 133 countries is the first to estimate the impact of all USAID’s work. In 2 decades, it has saved *92M* lives. Current cuts, if not reversed, are forecast to cost up to *14M* lives thru 2030. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

I just emailed you! Happy to help debug code offline if it'd be helpful.

I'd try using reghdfe rather than xtreg

good_description/good_description_ddk_agb.pdf at main · ddekadt/good_description Homepage of "Good Description" by Daniel de Kadt & Anna Grzymala-Busse - ddekadt/good_description

🚨 “Good Description” with @annagbusse.bsky.social 🚨

What sets 'good' description apart from 'mere' description?

We develop a framework for evaluating descriptive research, whether we are doing it as scholars or assessing it as readers.

Two main contributions...

🔗📄 tinyurl.com/gooddesc

Trump Administration Offers Migrants $1,000 to Voluntarily Leave The Trump administration is offering undocumented migrants $1,000 and paid travel if they agree to leave the US voluntarily, the latest effort to ramp up mass deportations and slash enforcement costs.

Ah, thought I shared the gift link. Try this: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Agreed! I think this move is a political gambit to inflate deportation numbers.

My quote in the article touches on this - paying people to return home is not likely to keep them from attempting to migrate again

And even if the admin doesn’t care about conflict in origin countries, we should!

A new Trump administration policy offers cash to migrants undertaking "self-deportation." It was a pleasure to speak with @bloomberg.com on some of the potential pitfalls of this approach, building on my research on a cash-for-repatriation scheme in Pakistan

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

This dataset is truly awesome. Check out this example map (especially Latin America) from their report introducing the dataset. Thanks to the authors & contributors! @chriswblair.bsky.social @guygrossman.bsky.social

The most revolting Oval Office presser since Feb. 28 (the Zelensky one).

Even just hitting a few of the lowlights of this will leave you sickened and dismayed.

BUT it's also clarifying. Anyone who has been talking about "the road to authoritarianism" can stop that now. The road is behind us.

How Gatsby foretold Trump’s America A century after it was published, F Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece is more relevant than ever. Sarah Churchwell on the trouble with ‘careless people’

on.ft.com/42gQ4HA How Gatsby foretold Trump’s America

To stop intimidation, Eisgruber needs your help When targeting one institution is a bald attempt to divide and conquer, as is the case with Columbia, it is essential for a coalition or group of institutions and individuals to stand up together.&nbs...

As my colleagues and I wrote in the Daily Princetonian last week, we all have to stand up for our science, and not accept this attack on universities. www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2025...

What I feel is ashamed.

Watching Putin’s little stooges try to bully Zelenskyy in our goddamned White House is pretty repulsive.

Title: Refugee Repatriation and Conflict: Evidence from the Maximum Pressure Sanctions Abstract: How does refugee return shape conflict in migrants’ destination communities? We argue that conditions inducing repatriation bear critically on the consequences of return. When refugees return because of worsening conditions in host countries, they are often marginalized and destitute. In this setting, mass return risks amplifying conflict in returnee-receiving communities. We test this theory leveraging the Trump administration’s sudden re-imposition of sanctions on Iran in 2018. These “Maximum Pressure” sanctions decimated the Iranian economy and spurred mass return of Afghan refugees from Iran. Exploiting historical returnee settlement patterns and the plausibly exogenous timing of the sanctions, we estimate the causal effect of large-scale refugee repatriation on violence. We find that the returnee influx increased insurgent violence in returnees’ destination communities. We find suggestive evidence for an opportunity cost mechanism. Sanctions-induced currency depreciation reduced household incomes in returnee-receiving areas, lowering reservation wages and driving up insurgent recruitment. We also find evidence that Iran retaliated against the sanctions by escalating support for Afghan insurgent factions. While insurgent violence increased in repatriation communities, there was no effect on communal conflict.

🚨🚨🚨🚨 New WP (with @benckrick.bsky.social @austinlw.bsky.social) available at the ESOC working paper series:

esoc.princeton.edu/wp39

Trump team aims to bankrupt Iran with new "maximum pressure" plan

In the US, amidst a demoralizing political news cycle, the Trump admin has reinitiated the Maximum Pressure strategy on Iran, imposing renewed sanctions.

Our findings suggest growing pressure on Iran could result in another wave of mass Afghan repatriation, further destabilizing Afghanistan.

Danish plan to repatriate Syrian refugees sparks controversy

For policy, a number of recent developments are relevant.

Several European countries are contemplating forcibly repatriating Syrian refugees. Achieving Syrian returns by restricting hosting conditions for Syrian refugees may exacerbate instability in Syrian areas that receive returnees from Europe.

Why does this all matter?

For theory, we think the framework we develop is quite useful. Consequences of repatriation are intimately linked with the contexts of repatriation.

Returns resulting from worsening conditions in a host country are an important, overlooked phenomenon.

Map of reliance on local institutions for dispute resolution.

Dispute resolutions offset risks of communal conflict stemming from return.

One possible reason is that there was nothing for returnees and their non-migrant neighbors to fight over, like parochial access of one group but not the other to aid, land, resources.

Another possibility is that strong local institutions in returnee-receiving areas mitigated conflict.

Return had a small negative effect on communal tension as reported in a survey.

No effect of return on communal conflict as reported in administrative data.

What about communal violence?

Much prior evidence suggests mass repatriation increases communal disputes and local feuds.

To our surprise, we find no evidence that return was associated with ⬆️ communal conflict in this setting. If anything, returnees reported better relations.

Map of Iranian covert networks in Afghanistan.

Insurgent violence increased in Iran-linked areas during the Maximum Pressure period.

We develop a new measure of Iranian covert support networks in Afghanistan, using FOIA-ed information on Iranian facilitation routes and arms trafficking.

Violence during the Max Pressure period ⬆️ disproportionately in returnee-receiving communities linked to Iran-backed Taliban cells

Another possible explanation for the increase in insurgent violence also stands out.

Iran may have retaliated against U.S. sanctions by ratcheting up support for militant factions in Afghanistan, hindering US efforts to negotiate a peace and withdraw.

Positive effect of return on insurgent allocation in labor-intensive tactics.

Positive effect of return on insurgent allocation against hard, military targets.

Positive effect of return on lethality of labor-intensive tactics.

We cannot directly observe Taliban recruitment designed to capitalize on these dynamics.

But: tactical shifts are suggestive. Insurgents flush with recruits can pull off riskier and deadlier ops using labor-intensive tactics (e.g., complex attacks) that require large teams of perps to conduct.

Negative effect of return on economic perceptions.

Negative effect of return on nighttime luminosity.

We find evidence consistent with this interpretation.

In returnee-receiving communities, there was ⬆️ unemployment, ⬇️ economic perceptions, and ⬇️ consumption (as measured by nighttime luminosity)

US Defense Dept. officials foresaw this possibility, and noted that large-scale returns of destitute Afghan refugees to Afghanistan at a time when the Taliban was interested in recruiting part-time fighters for the summer offensive would make these individuals targets of recruitment.

Why did violence ⬆️ in repatriation-receiving communities?

One explanation relates to a classical political economy account -- opportunity costs

The sanctions-induced economic collapse in Iran meant returnees and their non-migrant neighbors were impoverished and vulnerable to insurgent recruitment

Positive effect of return shock on insurgent-initiated attacks

Positive effect of return shock on insurgent-initiated attacks.

Positive effect of return shock on insurgent territorial control.

So how did the Maximum Pressure repatriation shock shape conflict in Afghanistan?

Militant violence ⬆️ drastically -- 2018 ended up as the single deadliest year of the conflict in Afghanistan from 2001-2021

Estimating equation

Parallel pre-trends

Settlement locations of the 2018 Max Pressure returnees closely resemble settlement patterns of earlier waves of returnees from Iran in the 2012-2015 period

Combining geographic variation in exposure to returns and exogenous time-series variation coming from the sanctions policy shock we estimate:

2012-2015 settlement locations of returnees from Iran

2018 returns from Iran to Afghanistan

To understand how the unexpected return shock shaped the incidence of conflict in the Afghan communities to which refugees repatriated from Iran, we use novel data on historical returnee settlement patterns shared by the IOM

Number of complex attacks in Afghanistan in 2018

Number of direct fire attacks in Afghanistan in 2018

Number of explosive attacks in Afghanistan in 2018

Number of indirect fire attacks in Afghanistan in 2018

So, the Max Pressure strategy spurred mass Afghan return in 2018, and this return owed to worsening conditions in Iran. Conditions in Afg. were not improving.

Critically, the pressure campaign escalated at the start of the Afghan fighting season, when the Taliban recruits for the summer offensive.