The geography of inter-state resource wars

The authors of this paper seek to establish a theoretical as well as empirical framework to assess the role of resource endowments and their geographic location for inter-state conflict. The main predictions of the theory are that conflict tends to be more likely when at least one country has natural resources; when the resources in the resource - endowed country are closer to the border; and, in the case where both countries have natural resources, when the resources are located asymmetrically vis-a-vis the border. The authors test these predictions on a dataset featuring oilfield distances from bilateral borders. The empirical analysis shows that the presence and location of oil are significant and quantitatively important predictors of inter-state conflicts after WW2.