Sending peace home! The effect of political favoritism on conflict

In this paper we investigate and assess the link between political favoritism and domestic conflict. In particular, we compare the difference in the likelihood and intensity of conflict between regions in which citizens reside that belong to identity groups of political leaders and others over time in a global sample for autocracies and non-autocratic regimes. Combining geo-coded conflict data with self-gathered information on the birthplaces and ethnic affiliation of 836 political national leaders and using a two-way fixed effects model with region and country-year fixed effects, we find that regions experience 13.2% fewer casualties while they constitute the birth region of the national leader in autocracies compared to other times. Our empirical evidence on ethnic favoritism is mixed.