@article{ref1,
title="Climate change and the opportunity cost of conflict",
journal="Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America",
year="2020",
author="Roche, Kevin R. and Müller-Itten, Michèle and Dralle, David N. and Bolster, Diogo and Müller, Marc F.",
volume="ePub",
number="ePub",
pages="ePub-ePub",
abstract="A growing empirical literature associates climate anomalies with increased risk of violent conflict. This association has been portrayed as a bellwether of future societal instability as the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events are predicted to increase. This paper investigates the theoretical foundation of this claim. A seminal microeconomic model of opportunity costs-a mechanism often thought to drive climate-conflict relationships-is extended by considering realistic changes in the distribution of climate-dependent agricultural income. <br><br>RESULTS advise caution in using empirical associations between short-run climate anomalies and conflicts to predict the effect of sustained shifts in climate regimes: Although war occurs in bad years, conflict may decrease if agents expect more frequent bad years. Theory suggests a nonmonotonic relation between climate variability and conflict that emerges as agents adapt and adjust their behavior to the new income distribution. We identify 3 measurable statistics of the income distribution that are each unambiguously associated with conflict likelihood. Jointly, these statistics offer a unique signature to distinguish opportunity costs from competing mechanisms that may relate climate anomalies to conflict.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0027-8424",
doi="10.1073/pnas.1914829117",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1914829117"
}