Killing for Profit: a model of intrastate conflict
There is no doubt that high levels of intrastate conflict are devastating for an economy. A clearer understanding of what attributes affect the level of violence that economies and societies endure could
be a critical turning point in attempting to defuse future conflicts before they happen. Police actions, terror campaigns, ethnic cleansing, and civil war between opposed conflict groups leads to lives lost,
increased medical costs, infrastructure destroyed, technological regression, lowered confidence, drops in foreign investment, population displacement, and permanent damage to individual quality of life. The
main question this paper attempts to answer is: would rational actors engage in violent behavior, and if so, why? At the core of this approach to conflict is the understanding that violence happens or does not
happen as a result of two opposing forces. First is the additional economic power that a conflict group can obtain through violence, through control of critical resources and governmental apparatus. Second is the
asset destruction caused by intrastate violence.
Working Paper
Aaron Cooke
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Below is a collection of my code that has broader application than my specific research. Please cite me if you use it for your own project. My research specific code is availiable on request.
Tauchen's method to create a discrete Markov matrix from an AR process- Fortran, Python
A simple code to calculate a gini coefficient from a vector of numbers -Python
A basic example of Value Function Iteration-Fortran
Very simple 3D Kernel density estimation-R code, Data