Violence and Conflict Negotiation: Exploring the Roles of Geography and Culture

Type Working Paper - (unpublished draft)
Title Violence and Conflict Negotiation: Exploring the Roles of Geography and Culture
Author(s)
URL https://umdrive.memphis.edu/skumar7/public/JM/violence-kumar101911.pdf
Abstract
Given the levels of poverty and economic development, India has not experienced a level of interpersonal and inter-group violence that have marked others comparable countries. However, there are large regional variations in the incidence of violence in India. In this paper, the main variable of interest is the percentage of a district area under rice cultivation. The labor intensive rice cultivation is more skill-oriented than the non-rice crops like wheat and corn. In the absence of the modern mechanized agricultural methods, it requires more cooperation from neighbors. I hypothesize that these features of the rice-growing areas would lead to a lower level of violence. In a linear regression framework, after factoring in the issues pertaining to selection on both observables as well as unobservables, the empirical results do support the hypothesis of the moderating influence of the rice-area variable.

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