Why do some economies recover from armed conflict much better than others? We provide evidence that political accountability determines whether post-conflict societies realize the peace dividend. We study Cambodia, where a nationwide landmine clearance campaign created large local potential surpluses by freeing arable land and reducing victimization by 48%. Whether these surpluses translate into realized development depends on accountability. Using a staggered difference-in-differences strategy, we show that clearance raises the probability of any nightlights by 7.3 percentage points in areas with strong pre-existing demand for checks and balances on political elites. Where such demand is weak, the effect is close to zero. Elite capture explains the divergence. In low-accountability areas, clearance increases land concessions, deforestation, land disputes, and labor displacement. Where accountability is strong, clearance instead raises household consumption by 22%. Post-conflict recovery requires not just the existence of a peace dividend but political constraints on its capture.
Wealthy foreign real estate buyers have increased rapidly over the past few decades. Of particular note are those from China; in 2016 alone, Chinese buyers were the source of over 100 billion USD of outflows to real estate markets worldwide. In this paper, we investigate the effect that these wealthy Chinese buyers have on local U.S. housing markets, local governments and residents. Using a novel instrument, we demonstrate that an increase in the share of wealthy Chinese buyers in a locality causes an increase in house price growth. As a result of this increased growth, local governments benefit from increased property tax revenues but do not see a drop in sales tax revenues, suggesting that the vacancy rate for Chinese-owned properties is no different from that of counterfactual buyers. A drop in rental prices suggests that wealthy Chinese buyers are more likely to rent out their houses and less likely to move into them.
This paper provides evidence of the long-run effects of a permanent increase in agricultural productivity on conflict. We construct a newly digitized and geo-referenced dataset of battles in Europe, the Near East, and North Africa from 1400–1900 CE and examine variation in agricultural productivity due to the introduction of potatoes from the Americas to the Old World after the Columbian Exchange. We find that the introduction of potatoes led to a sizeable and permanent reduction in conflict. *Media coverage: marginalrevolution.com* [[pdf]](https://www.jorismueller.com/files/Agricultural_productivity_conflict_latest_draft.pdf/)