Mobility and Conflict

We study the role of inter-group differences in the emergence of conflict. In our setting, two groups compete for the right to allocate societys resources, and we allow for costly intergroup mobility. The winning group offers an allocation, that the opposition can either accept, or reject and wage conflict. Expropriating a large share of resources increases political strength by attracting opposition members, but such economic exclusion implies lower per capita shares and higher risk of conflict. In equilibrium, allocations are non-monotonic in the cost of mobility. Moreover, limited commitment with respect to mobility gives rise to inefficient conflict in equilibrium.

• Publication year

  2015

• Venue

  Social Science Research Network

• Publication date

  2015-02-01

• Fields of study

  Economics, Political Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1257/MIC.20130055
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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