Civil war in poor countries: The threat from rising commodity prices

At the annual congress of the European Economic Association and the Econometric Society in Milan in August 2008, Torsten Persson, director of the Institute for International Economic Studies in Stockholm, delivered his Econometric Society presidential address on ‘State Capacity, Conflict and Development’ Afterwards, he spoke to Romesh Vaitilingam.about his research on these issues, preliminary findings of which suggest that rising commodity prices increase the chances of civil war breaking out in poor countries.