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.
We study corporate 'public alignment': firm speech that echoes the rhetoric of an autocratic regime. We develop a theoretical model in which public alignment sustains political risk-sharing between firms and the regime: by tying their payoffs to the regime's, aligned firms credibly commit to undertake costly, regime-favored actions in adverse states, and in return the regime becomes less likely to expropriate them. We construct an empirical measure of public alignment using a general, replicable index based on regime-specific phrases in annual reports and implement it for Chinese listed firms. We use this to validate both the model's predictions and its key assumption that alignment links firm and regime payoffs. More-aligned firms take more regime-favored actions during periods of unrest and earn lower profits, and alignment increases following heightened expropriation risk. These patterns hold after controlling for other forms of state proximity (state ownership, political connections, and Party cells) and are difficult to reconcile with alternative explanations such as cheap talk or simple patronage. [[pdf]](https://www.jorismueller.com/files/public_displays.pdf/)
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/)