David Ubilava

Overall, our results offer new evidence on how local maize prices affect social unrest and explain why the same price change can have diverging effects. [9/9]

Using the same Afrobarometer survey data, we show that these effects are tied to changes in perceived well-being—especially relative well-being—in the wake of price shocks. [8/9]

We check suggested mechanisms with geo-located data from Afrobarometer surveys.
– Higher maize prices amplify concerns about political instability and ethnic tensions only where there is little maize agriculture or high production inequality.
– In maize-producing regions, the effect reverses. [7/9]

We then examine mechanisms.
– At or immediately after harvests, protests weaken—plausibly due to higher opportunity costs.
– Following (presumably) poor harvests, riots subside—likely due to less resentment and, possibly also, less to fight over. [6/9]

Some numbers:
– In locations with no maize agriculture, a 10% increase in prices reduces unrest (protests) by 7.5%;
– In areas with average maize cropland (relative to none), riots fall by 5.5%;
– In areas with high ethnic inequality in maize production, riots rise by 6.6%. [5/9]

To test this, we develop an index capturing maize production inequality across historical ethnic boundaries. Price increases raise unrest—especially riots—in areas with high inequality, but reduce it in more homogeneous areas. [4/9]

Grievances can be understood through the lens of relative deprivation: people feel worse when others around them seem better off. Commodity price changes create precisely such distributional effects—benefiting net producers and hurting consumers. [3/9]

Kenya : Saboti Farmers at mercy of middlemen after state fails to declare maize prices - AgriInsite Maize farmers in Saboti are struggling to sell their harvest due to government delays in announcing buying prices, leading traders to offer as low as Sh2,000 per 90kg bag. Farmers express frustration,...

Our baseline finding may appear to contradict the common perception but is hardly counterintuitive. Farmers’ grievances are typically linked to plummeting prices: e.g., “The government has let us down. The market price ... is very low …” (shorturl.at/NFNpG). [2/9]

Do commodity price spikes cause social unrest? They do. But when we focus on local prices of a locally produced cereal—maize—we find the relationship is negative, on average.

This is a baseline result of our new working paper with Aaron Humphreys. [1/9]

davidubilava.com/Papers/prote...

Hi everyone! We're finally on bluesky! We heard this is now where all the cool people hang out, and even though we are just an economics department, we still would like to be cool.

1/ 🚀Big Update❗❗
Last year we published @NatCities, a systematic analysis of how countries are organized around multiple urban centres. That geospatial dataset is very complex. So we just launched the City-Region Explorer🔎... an easy to use platform for analysis. 🧵
#EconSky #Geography #GISChat

We have a superb lineup of 18 speakers representing 10 universities from across four countries. Really excited about this one!

Today at sydneyscope.org (organised by @davidubilava.bsky.social and @ashani.bsky.social). With @jacobedenhofer.bsky.social

In that order? That's bad editorship :)

Does conflict intensify during harvest in crop-producing regions?

7/ Our study builds on and contributes to the literatures on the agricultural roots of conflict, specifically in Southeast Asia, and the seasonality of conflict. These findings highlight the need to account for seasonal dynamics in conflict research and policy.

6/ The most robust result is an increase of up to ten percent in violence against civilians in rice-producing regions during harvest season. We also show that this effect is driven by rural areas with rainfed agriculture.

5/ Generally, we find that political violence by organized groups increases, while social unrest by unorganized groups decreases during the harvest season. These findings align with the rapacity and opportunity cost mechanisms, respectively.

4/ We analyze 86,000+ violent incidents across 8 Southeast Asian countries over the 2010–2023 period.

3/ Since agricultural employment and income are seasonal, conflict stemming from them may also be seasonal. Seasonality of agrarian conflict is the key focus of this research.

2/ Small changes to household income can trigger conflict in low- and middle-income countries. This can happen in urban and rural contexts. In the rural context, agriculture is often the key mechanism linking climate shocks to conflict.

1/ Does conflict intensify at harvest time in agricultural regions? Our new study explores this question in the context of Southeast Asia. Read the paper for the full story, or read this thread for tl;dr.

Agricultural roots of social conflict in Southeast Asia - Justin V Hastings, David Ubilava, 2025 We examine whether harvest-time transitory shifts in employment and income lead to changes in political violence and social unrest in rice-producing croplands o...

Great to see this one out in the wilderness. I will do a thread in due course. Until then, enjoy the free access to the full text.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

There is also a chance, that we have the case of (AI induced) plagiarism. In any case, what you can do is to alert the editor of your observation, and point them to the editor of the other journal. They will sort it out between each other then.

I haven't (neither as editor nor as a reviewer), but yeah, that too sounds plausible (though not optimal imo).

Might not be a parallel, but that the authors saw the (positive) reports, and decided that they can "do better" (in terms of a journal). Assuming they notified the original editor, this might be a okay (?), but in any case, personally I think this is a bad etiquette...

"Dear passengers, we apologise for a slight delay. We will soon take off, once we sort out a minor technical issue."

Yup, any time mate.

If you're the kind of person who waits until the last minute, the wait is over. Submit your paper or extended abstract for the 2nd SCoPE workshop to be held in Sydney on 3-4 June by the end of the day.

Don’t forget to submit your papers to the 2nd Social Conflict and Political Economy (SCoPE) workshop at the University of Sydney School of Economics!

Deadline: 31 January

More info: sydneyscope.org

Join our mailing list: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

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