【题  目】Roads to Peace or Discord: How Infrastructure Shapes Conflict Dynamics in Africa

【时  间】2026年11月11日（星期三），14:00-15:30

【地  点】后主楼1710会议室

【主讲人】林娅棠 副教授（香港科技大学经济系及公共政策系）

【主持人】曹思未 副教授（北京师范大学经济与工商管理学院）

摘要：

This paper examines the impact of infrastructure projects on conflicts in Africa using georeferenced data on infrastructure projects and conflict events at the spatial resolution of 0.1 degree$\times$ 0.1 degree for all of Africa between 2002 and 2019. Employing a spatial difference-in-differences design and instrumental variable strategy, we find that infrastructure projects, particularly roads, reduce high-intensity conflicts like battles. However, they also increase low-intensity conflicts such as riots and protests. Both patterns stem from the same underlying mechanism: attempts and capacity to capture the local economic surplus created by infrastructure. Actors with territorial control or taxation capacity, such as stationary rebel groups, have a stake in preserving future rents and therefore reduce violence that could disrupt or destroy those rents. By contrast, politically excluded communities that face land displacement or exclusion from project benefits may respond through lower-cost forms of contention, such as riots and protests. Consistent with this logic, the decline in violence is concentrated among stationary rebels and high-rent rebel bases, while the rise in protests is concentrated in politically marginalized ethnic regions and land-exposed areas.

报告人简介：

林娅棠，香港科技大学经济系及公共政策系副教授。2017年毕业于英国伦敦政治经济学院，获得经济学博士学位。研究方向包括城市和区域经济学、环境经济学、发展经济学。研究成果发表在American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Urban Economics, MIS Quarterly, Nature Climate Change等期刊。