Material Scarcity, Mortality, and Violent Conflict

Abstract

ABSTRACT Over the past decade, a growing literature has re-examined the relationship between material scarcity and conflict. Despite increasing policy salience and empirical interest, coherent theoretical accounts remain underdeveloped. This article develops microfoundations for a first-image rationalist explanation for war. It is shown that the basic physiological fact of necessary consumption induces context conditional risk preference, a feature that coherently explains empirical patterns of conflict. When applied to higher levels of analysis, the basic mechanism explains additional patterns such as the association between power preponderance and conflict and the oversized demands made by weak actors.