Economic Foundation of Conflicts in the Middle East

Abstract

Violent conflicts have become one of the major concerns of modern nation states. Regardless of their political, social, and economic conjunctures, nations are increasingly exposed to the risk of conflicts. Conflicts are generally categorized as “major” and “minor” based on the level of intensity and the number ofcasualties. The Middle East has experienced a dramatic increase in the number of conflicts since the early 1990s. In this chapter we examine the causes that triggered unprecedented changes in conflicts by using a panel of conflict estimates for 10 Middle Eastern nations for the period 1963–1999. The fixed effects model is used to control for unobservable country-specific effects that result in a missing-variable bias in cross-sectional studies. More importantly, the fixed effects model is chosen since the main goal of this study is to investigate what factors have caused statistically significant changes in conflicts over time within nations rather than to explain variation in conflicts across these nations. On the basis of the panel data, we explain the roles of inequality, inflation, growth, military spending, foreign direct investment, and remittances in the surge in conflicts in the Middle East.

Citation

Elkanj, N. and Gangopadhyay, P. (2011), "Economic Foundation of Conflicts in the Middle East", Chatterji, M., Bo, C. and Misra, R. (Ed.) Frontiers of Peace Economics and Peace Science (Contributions to Conflict Management, Peace Economics and Development, Vol. 16), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 153-167. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1572-8323(2011)0000016014