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1 s2.0 S0305750X19303626 Main PDF
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World Development
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a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: Humanitarian food aid has long been considered to be an effective tool towards conflict mitigation among
Accepted 11 October 2019 donors and policymakers. Within the Sustainable Development Goals that have the objectives of ending
hunger before 2030 (SDG#2) and bringing peace and justice (SDG#16), humanitarian food assistance may
play a critical role in delivering progress in developing countries. However, there have been growing con-
JEL codes: cerns that it may actually have counter-intended effects by aggravating civil conflicts in recipient countries.
F35 We estimate the effect of humanitarian food aid on civil conflict using a sample of 79 recipient countries
Q18
between 2002 and 2017. Our analysis exploits cross-sectional and time variation in between-country
D74
humanitarian food aid displacements. Our baseline instrumental variables estimates imply that a 10 percent
Keywords: increase in humanitarian food aid per capita decreases the incidence of civil conflict by about 0.2 percentage
Civil conflict point (or by about 0.9 per cent at the mean conflict incidence). Humanitarian food aid also decreases the
Humanitarian food aid incidence of small-scale and large-scale civil conflicts, and the onset and duration of civil conflicts.
Sustainable development goals Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Africa
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104713
0305-750X/Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 S. Mary, A.K. Mishra / World Development 126 (2020) 104713
humanitarian food assistance is politicized in the recipient country, in Wood and Molfino (2015) and Wood and Sullivan (2014) may
this may add to local resentment based on pre-existing perceptions be affected by the inclusion of year dummies that capture common
on unfairness and inequality (Messer, Cohen, & D’Costa, 1998). shocks. Finally, a few studies (e.g. De Ree & Nillesen, 2009; Nielsen,
Given the existence of multiple but opposite channels, it is analyt- 2011) have examined the effect of total aid on conflict, but the use
ically impossible to provide a clear conclusion on the net impact of of total aid, rather than sector aid, makes it difficult to isolate the
humanitarian food aid on civil conflict. It is also important to high- causal transmission channels (Zurcher, 2017).
light that these mechanisms are specific to each aid type, and that Despite the political importance of this topic, little is known of
they likely play out differently for other aid types (e.g. food aid and the effect of humanitarian food aid on civil conflict. This is partic-
medical humanitarian aid inflows). ularly relevant given the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) #2
More fundamentally, these conceptual mechanisms are also ‘‘end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition” and
dependent on the allocation mode of humanitarian food aid. Food #16 [promote] ‘‘peace, justice, and strong institutions.” If humani-
assistance is typically provided through two ways: in-kind aid tarian food aid indeed aggravates conflict, food assistance policies
(shipping commodities produced in donors’ countries to countries must be reformed to target only the environments meeting the
in need) and cash-based assistance. The latter includes local and conditions where we can ensure the efficacy of humanitarian food
regional purchases, direct cash transfers, and food vouchers. His- aid must be scaled down or ended (e.g. Lentz & Barrett, 2008).
torically, most donors have largely, if not exclusively, relied on Therefore, the objective of this study is to examine the causal
in-kind aid, but in the mid/late 2000s, international food assistance effect of humanitarian food aid on civil conflicts. To accomplish
has shifted toward a combination of in-kind and cash-based this objective we use data from 2002 to 2017 for a sample of 79
assistance3. recipient countries, from the Credit Reporting System (CRS) of
While both aid modalities, in-kind and cash-based, have advan- the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation
tages and challenges4, studies comparing the effectiveness of food (OECD), the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and Uppsala Con-
aid modalities (in-kind versus cash-based transfers) have found that flict Data Program (UCDP), and the World Development Indicators
all modalities support food security outcomes, but more interest- (WDI) of the World Bank. Our identification strategy exploits
ingly, that their effectiveness is on average similar (World Bank, between-country humanitarian food aid displacements within
2016; GAO, 2016). However, most of these studies have evaluated the sample (between the domestic country and the rest of the sam-
the impact of various aid modalities in non-emergency settings. A ple) and uses the latter to instrument domestic food aid per capita
notable exception is Tranchant et al. (2019) that provides an impact using a two-stage least squares (2SLS) instrumental variables (IV)
evaluation of food assistance in conflict-affected areas of Mali. Poli- estimation. These displacements result from the emergence of a
cymakers cannot reform humanitarian food assistance on the basis loud (i.e., attracting media and donors’ attention) food crisis hap-
of anecdotal evidence without a more robust evidence base (nor, pening in the rest of the world (Barrett, 2002). The validity of the
candidly, should they believe that humanitarian food aid prevents strategy relies on donors’ responses to loud emergencies and food
or mitigates conflict either). aid budget constraints (e.g. Barrett, 2002; Neumayer, 2005; World
The evidence base has remained scarce in the face of uncertain Food Programme, 2005; United Nations, 2010; Kuhlgatz & Abdulai,
and complex conceptual links. Recently, a much-publicized paper 2012; Reuters, 2014; World Hunger, 2018). Our modeling specifi-
by Nunn and Qian (2014) – NQ after that – has stirred controversy cation explicitly accounts for time-invariant omitted variables,
because the authors find that an increase in US humanitarian food time fixed effects, and country-specific time trends. We also run
aid increases the incidence and duration of civil conflicts in recip- a battery of robustness analyses accounting for, among others,
ient countries using a sample of 125 developing countries between country-specific linear and non-linear time trends and time-
1971 and 2006. These results have been disputed by USAID (2014) varying omitted variables affecting civil conflict and humanitarian
that shows that their results are sensitive to the exclusion of unre- food aid.
liable food aid data and the inclusion of additional controls. More Our baseline 2SLS-IV estimates suggest that a 10 percent
fundamentally, Christian and Barrett (2017) argue that the identi- increase in humanitarian food aid per capita results in a 0.2 per-
fication strategy in Nunn and Qian (2014) may be susceptible to centage point decrease in conflict incidence. In other words,
spurious trends that further cast doubt on NQ’s findings. humanitarian food aid saves lives in the developing world. Also,
In a related literature on development aid, a systematic litera- we find that humanitarian food aid decreases the onset and dura-
ture review by Zurcher (2017) suggests that overall humanitarian tion of civil conflicts. Our results are important for policymakers in
aid increases violence. Yet, a careful re-examination of the studies that they confirm the use of humanitarian food aid as an effective
sampled in this literature review may not support such conclusion. tool in promoting security in developing countries. To the extent
For example, the interpretation of the econometric results is inva- the pass-through between conflicts and food insecurity is strong
lid in Narang (2014, 2015) leading the author to misconclude about (FAO, Ifad, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, 2017), increasing humanitarian
the negative effects of humanitarian aid (see Mary, 2019). In par- food aid inflows would likely result in much-improved food secu-
ticular, the author fails to interpret the interaction term as a ratio rity, especially considering the direct effect of humanitarian food
of hazard ratios. In addition, Mary (2019) shows that conclusions aid on nutrition (e.g. Mary, Saravia-Matus, & Gomez y Paloma,
2018). Implicitly, our results point out the need to reallocate for-
3
For instance, about 45 per cent of humanitarian food assistance from the
eign sector aid towards humanitarian food aid if donors want to
European Commission was provided in cash or vouchers in 2018. In a more dramatic achieve SDG#2 and SDG#16.
fashion, since 2008, Canada exclusively relies on cash-based assistance for food aid. In addition, our results raise important concerns with respect to
However, it is noteworthy that the US, the largest donor of food aid, still relies the modeling of civil conflict in previous studies. In particular, we
primarily on in-kind aid due to US law requirements (Casey, 2018).
4 show that when our baseline model does not include country-
In-kind aid is often criticized for its costs, delays, and potential disruptions to
local markets. Local and regional purchases are much quicker and arguably create specific time trends, we find that humanitarian food aid does not
fewer side effects to local markets (Lentz et al., 2013), but are dependent on the affect civil conflict incidence. Researchers studying the links
calorific and nutritional quality of the available food supply in the region or country. between humanitarian food aid and conflict should, at the least,
Furthermore, in-kind aid and LRP may also be difficult to deliver when it is unsafe to test the robustness of their results to the inclusion of linear and
operate in conflict zones. On the contrary, cash transfers and food vouchers are
appropriate when there are security concerns about transporting in-kind aid, but they
non-linear time trends as the latter seem to be a driving force
can also be stolen or used by recipients to purchase non-food items in poorly behind recent results (i.e., Christian & Barrett, 2017). Lastly, our
controlled settings (e.g. World Bank, 2016; GAO, 2016). paper provides preliminary insights about the existence of
S. Mary, A.K. Mishra / World Development 126 (2020) 104713 3
between-country humanitarian food aid displacements within The importance of controlling for country-specific time trends
recipient countries and extends the empirical literature about (as well as time fixed effects) has already been highlighted in the
health aid displacements to a different aid type (e.g. Lordan, Ki climate-conflict literature (see Burke et al., 2009; Buhaug, 2010;
Tang, & Carmignani, 2011). In particular, we find that a 1 basis per- Couttenier & Soubeyran, 2014; Hsiang & Meng, 2014). Country-
centage point increase in the average share of humanitarian food specific time trends7 have been used to control for unobserved
aid in the rest of the world (excluding the domestic country) time-varying heterogeneity, that is, variables that could be evolving
decreases humanitarian food aid per capita in the domestic coun- over time (such as economic performance or political institutions)
try by about 0.7 USD. and altering conflict risk (e.g. Burke et al., 2009). In contrast, a com-
The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 mon, rather than country-specific, time trend requires the assump-
describes the empirical strategy. Section 3 presents the data and tion that all countries are comparable over time in the factors that
descriptive statistics. Section 4 analyses the main results. Section 5 influence conflict risk, e.g. geopolitics, natural resources, colonial his-
examines heterogeneous effects. Section 6 concludes. tory, international trade patterns, and geographic constraints
(Hsiang & Meng, 2014). Intuitively, there is no reason to believe that
these factors would be the same across countries. Hsiang and Meng
2. Empirical strategy
(2014) suggest using a F-statistic test that jointly tests whether
trends in conflict are statistically different from zero, and thus coun-
To examine the impact of humanitarian food aid on conflict the
tries have the same trends in conflict.
empirical model builds upon the linear framework that has been
Furthermore, in line with Christian and Barrett (2017), we check
used by Nunn and Qian (2014) and can be expressed as:
for the presence of nonlinear country-specific trends in conflict.
C it ¼ bAIDit þ cit X it þht þ di þ eit ð1Þ The visual inspection of conflict and aid variables, the Akaike Infor-
mation Criterion (AIC), and a F-statistic test can help inform model
AIDit ¼ aSjt þ lit X it þ pt þ qi þ it ð2Þ selection, i.e. which trend specification best fits the data, and all
suggest that country-specific cubic time trends should be included
Eq. (1) is the second stage of our 2SLS system and Eq. (2) is the in our baseline specification. This is in line with the conflict litera-
first stage. The use of 2SLS estimation is justified by the existence ture that has shown the importance of modeling time dependence
of reverse causality and simultaneity between conflict and human- in binary (conflict) data to the cubic degree (e.g. Carter & Signorino,
itarian food aid5. Note that we do not lag humanitarian food aid in 2010).
our model. Lagging a suspected endogenous explanatory variable is X it is a vector of independent variables that includes food aid
common practice in applied research to avoid potential endogeneity that is not humanitarian food aid, the logarithm of non-food for-
biases. However, Reed (2015) and Bellemare, Maski, and Pepinsky eign aid (defined as total aid minus humanitarian food aid and
(2017) find that this practice may result in inconsistent estimates other food aid), the logarithm of GDP per capita (based on Purchas-
and misleading inference. More fundamentally, the use of contem- ing Power Parity), the logarithm of inflation rate, and a set of cli-
poraneous aid is in line with the belief that humanitarian food aid mate variables controlling for the average temperature and
will have a within-year effect (e.g. Lentz, Passarelli, & Barrett, 2013)6. precipitation in each month of the year. These monthly variables
Throughout Eqs. (1) and (2), countries are indexed by i and year capture the fact that different countries have different crop-
is indexed by t; C it is the existence of a civil conflict in country i in specific growing seasons and different sensitivities to weather
year t; AIDit is humanitarian food aid per capita in US dollars; di (qi Þ variations (Nunn & Qian, 2014). We also include two weighted
are country-specific (time-constant unobserved) fixed effects con- averages, respectively, of humanitarian food aid and conflict inci-
trolling for time invariant heterogeneity. ht ðpt ) are time fixed dence in neighboring countries to account for potential spillover
effects controlling for common shocks that affect both conflict effects.
and humanitarian food aid, such as global or region-wide business The choice of entering specific variables in levels or logarithms
cycle, food price or natural resource price shocks. The instrument is driven our intuition behind what the relationship is between,
Sjt is the share of humanitarian food aid out of total aid averaged let’s say, non-food aid and conflict risk. In particular, we believe
across all sampled countries other than country i. The share is cal- that non-food aid has marginally increasing/decreasing effects on
culated on the monetary amount of humanitarian food aid, rather conflict risk. Such modeling for non-food aid has been used in
than on its quantity. the literature (e.g. Dube & Naidu, 2015). We also test whether log-
Before we discuss the identification strategy, it is important to ging the aid variables or using the levels of other non-food aid
highlight that NQ (2014) has come under scrutiny because their affects the results in robustness analyses and we confirm the base-
identification strategy relying on a continuous difference-in- line results using these alternative models (see Table A3).
difference estimation with Bartik-shift instruments may be suscep- We also include an indicator of the level of ethnic tensions and
tible to spurious nonlinear trends (Christian & Barrett, 2017). To an indicator of the political regime. The inclusion of these variables
prevent trend effects to bias our estimates, we add country- is common in the conflict literature (e.g. Burke et al., 2009). One
specific time trends in Eqs. (1) and (2): concern about the inclusion of the vector X it relates to the issue
of bad controls caused by the inclusion of potentially endogenous
C it ¼ bAIDit þ cit X it þht þ uit þ di þ eit ð3Þ and proxy regressors (Angrist & Pischke, 2008), so we estimate par-
simonious models in robustness analyses to examine the extent to
AIDit ¼ aSjt þ lit X it þ pt þ xit þ qi þ it ð4Þ which bad controls potentially affect inference.
The identification strategy exploits cross-sectional and time
where uit and xit are country-specific time trends. variation in between-country humanitarian food aid displace-
ments between country i and all other recipient countries included
5
In this paper, we cannot address questions with respect to the modality in the sample. We borrow from the health economics literature to
composition of food aid over time, and thus implicitly assume that the effectiveness design our IV strategy (e.g. Lordan et al., 2011). In our context,
of a 1$ of humanitarian food aid per capita is constant throughout the study period
and is not affected by its modality structure.
6 7
We run additional estimations replacing current aid with one-period lagged aid In practice, country-specific time trends are constructed by interacting the time
and find no significant effect, which supports the argument that the effect of variable (‘‘year”) with each country (via the country-specific fixed effect). This allows
humanitarian food aid does not last past a year in our sample (see column 4 Table A3). each country to have their own time trend.
4 S. Mary, A.K. Mishra / World Development 126 (2020) 104713
these displacements result from the emergence of a (relatively) conflict. In a related manner, humanitarian food aid in neighboring
loud(er) food crisis happening in the rest of the world (Barrett, countries could have spillover effects in the domestic country via
2002). The validity of the strategy relies on two main elements: cross-border trade, while civil conflicts in neighboring countries
donors’ responses to loud emergencies and food aid budget con- could have spillover effects via migration. To control for these
straints. First, there is evidence that donors respond to media cov- channels, we include a number of covariates, including other
erage (Kuhlgatz & Abdulai, 2012). As the media coverage of a food non-food aid, other food aid, GDP per capita, an indicator of the
crisis is amplified in a particular country, donors will redirect and political regime, as well as two weighted averages, respectively,
refocus their efforts towards this area, while humanitarian food aid of conflict incidence8 and humanitarian food aid in neighboring
for the country in a ‘silent’ emergency or in a situation that is rel- countries (based on the relative border’s length of a recipient coun-
atively less strategic in terms of the donors’ interests might receive try with its neighbors).
less humanitarian food aid (Barrett, 2002; Neumayer, 2005). Sec- Furthermore, the instrument may lead to changes in food prices
ond, donors’ budgets for food aid may not be increased during that may contribute to social unrest and conflict risks (Bellemare,
the fiscal or calendar year, therefore putting more stress on the 2015). However, we include time fixed effects controlling for global
inter-country competitive use and (re-)allocation of resources, or region-wide economic shocks affecting all countries in the
especially in a context where donors are slow to pledge and deliver region, lessening these concerns. We also include the inflation rate
humanitarian food aid (Kuhlgatz & Abdulai, 2012). There are to control for the fact that these price shocks may be domestic, as
indeed numerous and recurrent policy and media reports about well as region-wide. Moreover, it is possible that the instrument
the World Food Programme had to reduce or cut food aid in devel- affects the country’s reliance on humanitarian food aid, but again
oping countries during the year because of a lack of funds (e.g. this is likely to be mostly controlled via the country fixed effects
World Food Programme, 2005; Reuters, 2014; United Nations, and the time trends. Still, to be sure of the validity of the identifi-
2010; The Washington Post, 2018; World Hunger, 2018). In addi- cation strategy, we provide an additional analysis in which we
tion, the coordination between multiple donors of humanitarian include lagged humanitarian food aid to account for time-varying
food aid responses may also exacerbate such between-country dis- heterogeneity and aid inertia.
placements (Kuhlgatz, Abdulai, & Barrett, 2010). Also, Non- A more serious problem to our strategy may come from the fact
Governmental Organizations and aid delivery organizations may that conflict in a large country may create substantial migratory
contribute to this phenomenon by redirecting aid funds to partic- flows that result in a loud emergency crisis in other countries. In
ularly distressed regions. other words, there could be reverse causality between our depen-
Conditional on country-specific time trends, country fixed dent variable in Eq. (3) and the instrument in Eq. (4). To double-
effects, time fixed effects, and the vector of controls X it , the check the validity of our approach, we drop the five largest popu-
instrument Sjt that is defined as the humanitarian food aid lated countries of our sample, i.e., China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria,
funding received by all countries other than i, (AIDt AIDit ), to total Pakistan, in sensitivity analyses, and confirm this does not affect
aid funding received by all countries other than i, our baseline estimates. Another threat to our identification strat-
(TOTAIDt TOTAIDit ), averaged across all sampled countries other egy might come from potential reverse causality between the
than i, represents the donors’ response to the occurrence of a (rela- dependent variable AIDit and the instrument Sjt in Eq. (4). However,
tively) loud(er) food emergency in the rest of the world. a in Eq. (4) an endogeneity test fails to reject the null that the instrument can
captures the between-country displacement effect, or in other be treated as exogenous in Eq. (4), thus indicating this is not a
words, translate the redirection of humanitarian food aid resources problem here.
towards the rest of the world, but away from country i. Thus we The approach also relies on the fact that humanitarian food aid
expect a to be negative, especially in a context of limited budget increases in the rest of world due to a food crisis, but not because
constraints, donors’ fatigue, or long funding authorization and allo- food aid directed at the country i has decreased following changes
cation procedures. in conflict risks in this country. In other words, conflict in country i
What about b? Nunn and Qian (2014) suggest that increased should not affect the instrument. We run additional estimations
humanitarian food aid may cause increased civil conflict risks and indeed show that conflict in country i does not affect the
because humanitarian food aid is vulnerable to theft allowing instrument, thus providing supporting evidence for this assumption.
rebels to fight longer. However, Blattman and Miguel (2010) high- Moreover, if donors increase overall aid as a response to con-
light exogenous sources of income growth are generally associated flict, the IV estimate of humanitarian food aid on conflict will be
with lower conflict risks, thus making this channel unlikely. In biased upwards. This is not a serious concern though, because it
addition, while some humanitarian food aid may be captured by means our baseline estimate may be viewed as a lower bound to
rebels, it is equally likely that most humanitarian food aid ends the positive effect of food aid. Nonetheless, we can examine this
up being delivered and arguably reduces conflict risks (through problem through a robustness analysis where data, when total
reduced starvation), so we could now expect b to be negative in aid per capita changes by more than 10 per cent (decrease and
such context. On the whole, it is not analytically clear what to increase), is excluded.
expect for b. Additionally, we implement a test in support of the validity of
Our strategy to causal identification depends on the credibility the exclusion restriction following Brückner (2013). We can intro-
of the exclusion restriction behind the IV strategy, which is that the duce the instrument Sjt as a right hand side variable in Eq. (3) and
instrument, conditional on the set of fixed effects, time trends, and use six-period lagged humanitarian food aid as a new instrument
controls, included in Eqs. (3) and (4), is correlated with conflict in in Eq. (4). If the coefficient associated to Sjt in the second stage is
country i only through the domestic humanitarian food aid chan- statistically significant, this may indicate the violation of the exclu-
nel. A potential threat to our identification strategy exists if the sion restriction. We also perform several sensitivity analyses while
instrument influences domestic conflict through other channels
that are not controlled for. For example, the potential redirection
of food aid resources away from the domestic country may also
affect other types of aid that are related to conflict risks (e.g. 8
The weighted average is linked to the dependent variable. For example, if we use
Gupta et al., 2018). Equally, the redirection of aid may affect eco- the number of battle-related deaths as dependent variable in the structural model, we
nomic growth and/or governance that have been both linked to include the weighted average of the number of battle-related deaths in neighboring
countries.
S. Mary, A.K. Mishra / World Development 126 (2020) 104713 5
relaxing the exclusion restriction using the Union of Confidence (humanitarian food aid) to make the estimation more fitting to
Intervals approach designed by Conley, Hansen, and Rossi (2012). the 2SLS framework. For instance, we could use the number of
Another concern potentially affecting our estimates of Eq. (3) is battle-related deaths or civilian casualties for the dependent vari-
that the latter do not fully account for time-varying heterogeneity. able (in levels or logs), and/or use the logged value of aid. Note,
Arguably, country-specific time trends capture some of this hetero- though, both changes would represent a change in the functional
geneity (Burke et al., 2009), but it is likely some may be left out. To form of the structural model, and the choice of the new baseline
account for this problem, we estimate a model with lagged conflict. model would then have to be informed by AIC and prior beliefs.
The use of a lagged dependent variable explicitly controls for time- More importantly, while this may lessen some of the issues for
varying omitted variable biases (Mary et al., 2018). If these results the estimations discussed above, this would also bring about
remain in line with our static estimates of Eq. (3), time-varying another new set of issues, related to the zero values in both the
omitted variables biases are likely unimportant in driving our dependent and the aid variables. If we log variables whose values
baseline results. often take 0, we risk losing a lot of information. The traditional
Through the estimations, the strength of instruments is solution to this problem has been to use a transformation such
examined by reporting the Kleibergen-Paap rk Wald F statistic as lnðAID þ xÞ with x being a small number. As a way to test the
(or F-statistic) that we compare with the critical values from robustness our results, we also provide these alternative estima-
Stock and Yogo (2005) for testing weak instruments. We test the tions in robustness analyses (see Table 3 and A3).
null hypothesis that the maximum size distortion is greater than
10, 15 or 20 percent and (if needed) the null that the relative bias
is larger than 10, 15, or 20 percent. We report inference robust to 3. Data and descriptive statistics
weak instruments, based on the Stock-Wright S Lagrange
Multiplier (LM) statistic (Pflueger & Wang, 2015). Following The sample is composed of 79 humanitarian food aid recipient
Young (2018), we test the inference relative to our main results countries. Data are collected for the period 2002–2017. The avail-
to bootstrapping and proceed to leave-one (cluster)-out tests to ability and quality of data restricts the selection of countries and
examine the robustness of our panel IV regressions. time coverage. Especially, data on sector foreign aid before 2002
Last, it is important to note that 2SLS estimators typically apply is not suitable for empirical analysis (Mary et al., 2018)10. The full
when both the dependent variables in the structural model (Eq. list of countries can be found in the Appendix while descriptive
(3)) and the reduced form for the endogenous regressor (Eq. (4)) statistics can be found in Table 1.
are continuously distributed. This is neither the case here because The indicator of civil conflict incidence is from the PRIO/UCDP
conflict incidence is binary and humanitarian food aid cannot be database (version 19.1) (Gleditsch, Wallensteen, Eriksson,
negative. Ideally, one would like to extend the 2SLS reasoning to Sollenberg, & Strand, 2002; Pettersson et al., 2019), where civil
nonlinear models. Unfortunately, there is no commonly accepted conflict (or state-based armed conflict) is defined as ‘‘a contested
and easily adaptable approach that allows doing so, especially incompatibility that concerns government and/or territory where
where the first stage would be a tobit model and the second- the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least
stage a probit model. Trying to extend such reasoning often results one is the government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-
in (infamous) forbidden regressions. Thus, the most often applied related deaths in a calendar year.” (Pettersson, 2019). In practice,
approach has been to use linear 2SLS estimation. This choice is sup- civil conflict is captured by a binary variable taking the value 1 if
ported by evidence that show little differences between partial the conflict has resulted in more than 25 battle-related deaths in
effects from more plausibly correct nonlinear models to partial year t, 0 otherwise. We also use several alternative conflict vari-
effects from linear models (e.g. Papke & Wooldridge, 2008). ables in robustness analyses, especially a binary variable for the
More fundamentally, whether the dependent variable in the onset11 of civil conflicts. We also test the conflict incidence for minor
second stage is binary, non-negative, or continuously distributed, and major civil conflicts. A minor conflict is defined by the number of
the 2SLS-IV approach captures the local average treatment effect, battle-related deaths being between 25 and 999. If a conflict results
that is, in this context, the effect of humanitarian food aid for coun- in more than 999 battle-related deaths, the conflict is a major con-
tries receiving such aid, which is the main question of interest in flict. We also run additional estimations where the dependent vari-
our paper (Angrist & Pischke, 2008). There are, of course, more able is the number of battle-related deaths and the number of
complex alternatives to estimating binary models with endoge- civilian casualties12. Battle-related deaths refer to those deaths
nous regressors such as control function (CF) methods or maxi- caused by the warring parties that can be directly related to combat
mum likelihood (ML) estimators. The former is typically used during an armed conflict, but exclude deaths due to disease and star-
when the endogenous variable is continuously distributed while vation, criminality, or attacks deliberately directed against civilians
the latter is used when the endogenous regressor is binary. How- only. Civilian fatalities result from the use of armed force by the gov-
ever, neither CF methods nor ML estimators can accommodate lim- ernment of a state against civilians which results in at least 25
ited regressors. Both CF and ML approaches also come at the cost of deaths.
additional assumptions with respect to the joint distribution of Non-humanitarian food aid is defined as the supply of edible
errors in the structural model and the reduced form for the human food under national or international programmes including
endogenous regressor. Moreover, it is noteworthy that, unlike CF transport costs; cash payments made for food supplies; project
or ML estimators9 that become generally inconsistent if an appropri- food aid and food aid for market sales (CRS purpose code 52010).
ate instrument is not included, the 2SLS estimator only loses Unlike humanitarian food aid, it typically targets hunger and food
efficiency (Baum, Dong, Lewbel, & Yang, 2012). insecurity in the medium run. Other aid is defined as total aid
Given these difficulties, one might be tempted to change the minus food aid and humanitarian food aid. Aid inflows are gross
dependent variable and/or the independent variable of interest disbursements in constant 2017 USD (OECD, 2019).
10
We do not rely on FAO data, unlike Nunn and Qian (2014), because our IV
9
Furthermore, these alternatives rarely allow for the inclusion of fixed effects. A approach requires total aid which is not available from the FAO dataset. Moreover,
potential exception is the approach developed by Papke and Wooldridge (2008), but using the same database has the advantage of consistency across aid measurements.
11
the approach only fits the case where the endogenous regressor is continuous. Also, The onset (offset) indicator takes the value of 1 in the year where the conflict
these approaches do not converge under more advanced model specifications, i.e. started (ended), 0 otherwise.
12
when we include country-specific nonlinear time trends. In both cases, we use the best estimates provided by the UCDP databases.
6 S. Mary, A.K. Mishra / World Development 126 (2020) 104713
Table 1
Descriptive statistics of the baseline estimation sample (N = 1158).
GDP per capita (in 2011 constant dollars, purchasing power par- literature (e.g. Burke et al., 2009). The monthly values for
ity), total population and the inflation rate are taken from the WDI average temperature and precipitation are taken from the
database (WDI, 2019). The index on the level of ethnic tensions Climate Research Unit database of the University of East Anglia
captures the existence of tensions attributable to racial, nationality (version TS v 4.01) (CRU, 2019). Temperature data are expressed
or language divisions in a country. We rescale an index taken from in degree Celsius (°C) while precipitation data are expressed in
the International Country Risk Guide from the Political Risk Ser- millimeters (mm).
vices from 0 to 1 (ICRG, 2018), with 0 (1) indicating the lowest Fig. 1 shows the humanitarian food aid and civil conflict trends
(highest) level of ethnic tensions. Ethnic divides have long been over the period 2002–2017 for the sample. It is clear that the aver-
suspected to be a cause of conflict (e.g. Alesina, Devleeschauwer, age incidence of civil conflict has been overall increasing since
Easterly, Kurlat, & Wacziarg, 2003). 2012, while it had fallen down significantly between 2007 and
The Polity2 score is taken from the Polity IV database from the 2012. Interestingly, the increasing conflict trend seems to coincide
Center for Systemic Peace. The variable captures the type and with several years of decreased humanitarian aid inflows (though
quality of political regime and has been previously used in the with some delay).
S. Mary, A.K. Mishra / World Development 126 (2020) 104713 7
4. Results Table 2
The effect of humanitarian food aid on civil conflict incidence.
4.2. Test of exclusion restriction Furthermore, one of the issues of our baseline specification is
that our results may be affected by the issue of bad controls
The validity in the IV estimation in Table 2 relies on assuming (Angrist & Pischke, 2008). We thus propose a couple of parsimo-
that the between-country ‘displacement’ instrument affects nious models in columns 4 and 5 Table 4. Column 4 excludes all
domestic civil conflict only through domestic humanitarian food variables from the model but humanitarian food aid. Column 5
aid per capita. Table A1 implements an intuitive check for the only excludes ethnic tensions and polity2 for which data are often
validity of the exclusion restriction following Brückner (2013). Col- missing. Overall, these additional results support our baseline
umn 1 Table A1 first presents the direct impact of the ‘displace- results. For example, the coefficient for humanitarian food aid is
ment’ instrument on civil conflict. The OLS coefficient is positive negative in column 4 (and a bit imprecise), though somewhat
(1.273) and significant. This suggests that the redirection of food lower than in column 3 Table 2. In particular, a 10 percent increase
assistance funds away from (towards) the rest of the world is asso- in humanitarian food aid per capita would decrease the probability
ciated with lower (higher) conflict incidence in the domestic coun- of civil conflict approximately by slightly less than 0.1 percentage
try. This implicitly confirms our previous results and the point or by about 0.6 percent. Still, even if this estimate is lower
dominance of the positive mechanisms with respect to the impact than our baseline estimate in Table 2, humanitarian food aid
of humanitarian food aid. appears as a ‘‘bargain” towards conflict mitigation in terms of
Column 2 introduces the ‘displacement’ instrument as a right- cost-effectiveness. Column 6 Table 4 controls for time-varying
hand side variable in Eq. (3) and uses instead six-period lagged heterogeneity in Eq. (3) by adding a lagged civil conflict variable.
humanitarian food aid per capita15 to instrument current humani- Again, the coefficient for humanitarian food aid remains negative
tarian food aid per capita. The ‘displacement’ coefficient is now neg- and is statistically significant (0.013).
ative, in comparison with the direct positive ‘displacement’ effect in Table A3 provides alternative aid specifications. Column 1 logs
column 1 Table A1, and statistically insignificant. In other words, our all aid variables in the model. Colum 2 uses the transformation
preferred instrument does not have any direct effects on conflict ln(AID + 0.1) to avoid the loss of information related to zero aid
other than through the humanitarian food aid channel. This intuitive values in the case of humanitarian food aid (and food aid). Column
check, therefore, provides reassuring evidence for the exclusion 3 uses the levels of aid variables in the model. Across these alter-
restriction. Let’s note that the coefficient for humanitarian food aid native aid specifications, columns 1–3 all suggest that humanitar-
per capita (0.032) is negative, twice the estimate in Table 2, and ian food aid would decrease the incidence of civil conflict in the
statistically significant. sample. When we replace current humanitarian food aid by its
We also perform several sensitivity analyses while relaxing the one-period lag, we find no effect of lagged humanitarian food aid
exclusion restriction using the Union of Confidence Intervals on civil conflict. This suggests that the effect of humanitarian food
approach designed by Conley et al. (2012). We use the support aid is short-lived.
restrictions ½2db; 2db where d takes the value 0 or 1. b is the Next, column 5 weighs the humanitarian food aid variable by
estimate of the effect of food aid on conflict. The 95 per cent the country’s relative land area. Conflict is likely to be located away
confidence intervals are respectively [0.027;0.007] and from the capital (Findley et al., 2011). Humanitarian food aid is tar-
[0.028;0.006] for d ¼ 0 andd ¼ 1. Given that this approach is geted at populations in conflict zones. However, humanitarian food
considered conservative, it is clear that the relaxation of the exclu- aid may not always and/or fully reach the areas most affected by
sion restriction does not invalidate our inference. conflict (or at least not proportionally to the conflict intensity)
(e.g. Briggs, 2018). This arguably means that our estimated effect
of humanitarian food aid could be underestimating the true
4.3. Alternative specifications effect16. The estimate in column 5 Table A3 is 0.052, and much lar-
ger than previously estimated in Table 2. This result suggests that
Table A2 summarizes the 2SLS-IV estimation results across humanitarian food aid is likely to be more effective at mitigating
several alternative specifications. First, column 1 displays the esti- conflict than what our baseline results indicate.
mation results of a model in which we exclude country-specific Finally, column 1 Table A4 drops the five largest countries from
time trends. The 2SLS coefficient for humanitarian food aid per the sample. The estimate is virtually the same than in Table 2 col-
capita is now positive and insignificant. This implies that human- umn 3. Column 2 drops data where total aid responses to conflict
itarian food aid has no effect on conflict incidence in the sample. have been larger than 10 per cent. This allows checking whether
When we include country-specific linear time trends in column 2, the potential endogeneity between overall aid budgets to conflict
the estimate turns negative but is still insignificant. When we affects our IV estimates. The IV estimate in column 2 (0.044) is
include country-specific quadratic time trends in column 3 negative and much larger than in Table 2. As explained in the mod-
Table A2, the estimate is negative and is somewhat imprecise. eling section, this is in line with our IV estimate in Table 2 being a
This sensitivity analysis somewhat resonates with Christian and lower bound to the positive effect of humanitarian food aid
Barrett (2017). towards mitigating civil conflict.
Notably, the AIC clearly point towards the specification with
country-specific cubic time trends being the preferred model over
4.4. Persistence in humanitarian food aid
all specifications, as the AIC for our baseline model in column 3
Table 2 is 846 (against 73, 349, 596, respectively, for the
Kuhlgatz and Abdulai (2012) show that humanitarian food aid
models without time trends, with linear time trends, and with
is relatively persistent. Our instrumentation strategy does not
quadratic time trends). Overall, these findings illustrate the need
explicitly account for aid inertia, though the country-specific time
to account for country-specific time trends in modeling conflict,
trends likely account for some time-varying heterogeneity in Eq.
as had been previously argued in previous studies (e.g. Burke
(4). To check whether our instrumentation strategy is affected by
et al., 2009). It also sends a warning to future researchers in that
the validity of empirical results should be tested to the inclusion
16
of country-specific nonlinear time trends. To simplify the exposition, let’s assume that 10 per cent of humanitarian food aid
is given to non-conflict areas (rather than 0 per cent), the only way populations in
conflict areas will benefit from such humanitarian food aid is through indirect market
15
We use six-period lagged humanitarian food aid because estimations based on effects. The additional food in non-conflict areas lowers the overall food demand and
earlier lags suffer from weak instruments. puts fewer pressures on food prices in other (conflict) areas.
S. Mary, A.K. Mishra / World Development 126 (2020) 104713 9
Table 3
The effect of humanitarian food aid on civil conflict: alternative conflict outcomes.
2SLS-IV Weibull-IV
Second stage
Dependent variable Minor Major Ln (Battle-related deaths + 0.1) Ln (Civilian fatalities + 0.1) Onset conflict Offset conflict
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Humanitarian food aid per capita 0.015* 0.005* 0.133* 0.037 0.010# 1.096#
[0.062] [0.099] [0.062] [0.499] [0.102] (0.066)
Other non-food aid per capita, log 0.011 0.003 0.126 0.364* 0.006 0.706*
(0.025) (0.007) (0.176) (0.216) (0.026) (0.127)
Food aid per capita 0.020* 0.001 0.132* 0.032 0.008 1.061
(0.010) (0.003) (0.072) (0.029) (0.007) (0.149)
Ethnic tensions 0.562* 0.200 5.176*** 1.412 1.002*** 10.374**
(0.299) (0.151) (1.952) (1.230) (0.270) (12.31)
Polity 2 score 0.007 0.005 0.105# 0.081* 0.012 0.992
(0.009) (0.006) (0.065) (0.045) (0.009) (0.038)
GDP per capita, log 0.047 0.707*** 6.647** 7.437*** 0.765*** 0.675
(0.162) (0.233) (3.080) (1.351) (0.216) (0.261)
Inflation, log 0.013 0.002 0.090 0.066 0.017# 1.082
(0.012) (0.006) (0.075) (0.073) (0.012) (0.186)
HFA in neighbor countries (w.a.) 0.007 0.000 0.004 0.121 0.009 1.046
(0.010) (0.007) (0.071) (0.106) (0.010) (0.045)
Conflict in neighbor countries (w.a.) 0.072 0.021 0.000 0.000 0.111** 1.274
(0.057) (0.027) (0.000) (0.000) (0.051) (1.178)
Observations 1,158 1,158 1,158 1,158 1,158 934
Number of countries 79 79 79 79 79 79
Country FE YES YES YES YES YES n.a.
Year FE YES YES YES YES YES n.a.
Country-specific time trends CUBIC CUBIC CUBIC CUBIC CUBIC n.a.
Weather controls YES YES YES YES YES YES
First-stage, F-stat 12.25 12.49 12.65 12.36 12.17 n.a.
Notes: Robust country-clustered standard errors in parentheses*** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.10, # p < 0.15. The IV in column 6 relies on a control function approach. We
insert the residuals from estimating Eq. (4) into the Weibull model. The estimate in column 6 is a hazard ratio. W.a.: weighted average.
aid is effective at preventing new civil conflicts. A 10 per cent are unable to provide estimations for other regions18. Overall,
increase in per capita humanitarian food aid would decrease the Table 4 suggests that the humanitarian food aid is particularly effec-
onset of civil conflict by 2.3 per cent. tive in the African context.
To study the effect of humanitarian food aid on the duration of
conflicts, we follow previous studies that use survival models (e.g.
Narang, 2014). We use the control function approach used by Nunn 6. Conclusions
and Qian (2014) to account for potential endogeneity using the
‘displacement’ instrument. Column 6 Table 3 provides estimates Humanitarian food aid is designed to save lives and alleviate
for the Weibull model (we find the latter is preferred to a Cox human suffering in conflict situations. Within the Sustainable
model). However, the unusual negative AIC value suggests that this Development Goals that have the objectives of ending hunger
framework may not be applicable to the outcome of interest and before 2030 (SDG#2) and bringing peace and justice (SDG#16),
these results should be taken with caution. This caveat aside, the humanitarian food assistance may play a critical role in delivering
main message is that humanitarian food aid seems to be associated progress in developing countries. However, there have been grow-
with a shorter civil war survival, since the hazard ratio in column 6 ing concerns that humanitarian food aid may actually have
is above 1. In other words, humanitarian food aid seems to reduce counter-intended effects by aggravating conflicts in recipient
the duration of civil conflicts. countries. Given the importance of humanitarian food assistance
policies, this paper has revisited the effect of humanitarian food
aid on conflict in developing countries.
5.2. Contextual factors We find that, on average, an increase in humanitarian food aid is
associated with decreased incidence of civil conflicts in the sample.
Table A6 examines whether the effect of humanitarian food aid Overall, the provision of humanitarian food aid in conflict situa-
is heterogeneous across different contexts. Especially, Table A6 tions seems to provide some solace to the populations that may
examines whether the impact of food aid on conflict depends on be more likely to join the rebellion and fight, and weaken the risk
the level of ethnic tensions in the recipient country (columns 1–2) of civil war. The positive effect of humanitarian food aid towards
as might be implicitly suggested by previous studies (e.g. conflict mitigation is economically large.
Schleussner, Donges, Donner, & Schellnhuber, 2016), on the infla- Our empirical results are also robust to the use of alternative
tion rate via food prices (columns 3–4) as suggested by conflict indicators, in particular the onset and duration of conflicts.
Bellemare (2015), and on the precipitation level (columns 5–6). These additional results convey much political importance and
High/low is defined with respect to being above/below the mean support the sustained provision of food assistance in high-risk
sample level of each mitigating variable. countries as an effective tool for conflict prevention and mitigation.
For example, according to column 1 Table 3, when ethnic ten- We also find that humanitarian food aid is particularly effective
sions are higher than the mean sample level, humanitarian food in situations of (likely) weather-related food scarcity and high eth-
aid is found to have a statistically significant and large effect on nic tensions. We also find that humanitarian food aid is particularly
conflict reduction (coefficient: 0.033). However, when ethnic ten- effective in Africa.
sions are lower, the effect of food aid on conflict subsides as the More fundamentally, we raise a major concern in empirical
coefficient is negative but statistically insignificant. studies about the modeling of conflict. In particular, we show that
Further, the main message from columns 3–4 is that human- the inclusion of country-specific nonlinear time trends is critical in
itarian food aid largely reduces conflict incidence in situations of identifying the causal impact of humanitarian food aid on conflict.
low inflation; when inflation is high, food aid is found not to This resonates with Christian and Barrett (2017) and Burke et al.
affect conflict incidence. This is somewhat surprising, but argu- (2009) in somewhat related literature. We invite future researchers
ably this could be due to the fact that price-driven riots are an to double-check the robustness of their empirical results to the
urban phenomenon and might likely happen away from conflict inclusion of country-specific time trends.
areas. Columns 5–6 suggest that humanitarian food aid is quite The implication of our findings for policymakers and develop-
effective at reducing conflict risks as precipitation levels are espe- ment practitioners is clear. Humanitarian food aid overall saves
cially low. This is line with the scarcity channel discussed in the lives in recipient countries, and as such, the continuation of
introduction (e.g. Hendrix & Brinkman, 2013). When precipita- humanitarian food assistance will make the developing world,
tions are above the mean level (or in situations of relative food especially Africa, safer, and by extension, less food insecure (see
abundance), the coefficient for humanitarian food aid is found FAO, Ifad, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. , 2017). At a global level, the sta-
positive though insignificant. This somewhat relates to recent bility of developing countries may contribute to security and lesser
studies linking food scarcity/abundance to conflict (e.g. Koren, terrorist threats worldwide (Piazza, 2008; Steinwand, 2015; Open
2018; Koren & Bagozzi, 2017). letter to US congress, 2017). On a more practical level, our findings
indicate the relatively good ‘value for money’ of humanitarian food
5.3. Regional estimations assistance towards conflict prevention and mitigation. Further-
more, the existence of heterogeneous effects offers some guidance
Last, Table 4 presents regional estimations for Africa and Asia, to better target the locations and times where the efficacy of
two regions that have suffered a great deal because of hunger humanitarian food aid can be improved.
and civil conflicts. When we limit the sample to African or Asian The SDG aims to end hunger and make the world a safer place.
countries, the coefficients for humanitarian food aid seem to be However, our results are at odds with the reality of foreign aid sec-
much larger than estimated in Table 2. toral allocation in recent years. Mary et al. (2018) show that the
For Africa (sub-Saharan Africa and Northern Africa), a 10 per share of humanitarian food aid has relatively decreased in the last
cent increase in humanitarian food aid per capita (about two decades. According to our findings, this may put at risk the
0.15USD) in the region would result in a 2.7 per cent decrease in progress towards achieving the SDG #2 and #16. In addition, in
conflict incidence. This is more than twice the relative effect esti- the US (the major humanitarian food aid donor), the Global Food
mated for the entire sample. For Asia, a 10 per cent increase in
humanitarian food aid per capita (about 0.15USD) in the region 18
This is because we do not have enough countries per region or the estimations
would result in a 0.3 per cent decrease in conflict incidence. We suffer from weak instruments.
S. Mary, A.K. Mishra / World Development 126 (2020) 104713 11
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