The Economic Drivers of State Violence against Civilians: Evidence from Myanmar

Abstract Violence against civilians has killed nearly one million people worldwide and displaced millions more over the past three decades. This paper examines the economic forces driving civilian persecution in Myanmar. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we show that violence against civilians increases in rice-suitable townships when rice prices rise, the opposite pattern from that documented in the literature on two-sided conflicts. We argue that large power asymmetries inherent in civilian persecution explain this difference. Higher returns from expropriating rice harvests and rice-growing inputs during these periods drive the pattern we observe in Myanmar, which we corroborate with an original survey of Rohingya refugees forcibly displaced to Bangladesh. Our work demonstrates how to generate systematic and representative evidence on civilian persecution in politically sensitive and data-poor contexts.