This volume is a collection of 14 of my papers in the economics, or political economy, of conflict, principally, but not exclusively concerned with civil war, with some pieces solely authored and some jointly written, spanning publication dates between 2002 and 2017. They cover a variety of topics within the ‘rational choice’ approach to conflict, including issues of conflict causation to sustaining peace agreements, how a peaceful state is made sustainable, the relationship of conflict with economic progress, the trade–conflict nexus, the effects of conflict on financial deepening and fiscal capacity, the effects of restricting international narcotics flows, aspects of the nature of transnational terrorism, and the evolution of the fear for certain immigrant groups in Western nations. The chapters cover both theoretical ideas, critical literature reviews, theory in a mathematical model, econometric empirical analysis which is cross-national, as well as sub-national econometric analyses, which can be described as country case studies. Each paper was driven by an intellectual lacunae at the time, as well as the need to inform the policy dialogue. It is my belief that these papers continue being relevant, as most of the aforementioned topics still remain unresolved, accompanied with unanswered questions in the policy realm.

Organized violence can manifest itself in wars or other forms of political action, short of war. It is my contention that armed conflict, including, civil war, which is the principal form of war nowadays in the developing world, is inseparable from inequality broadly speaking and economic development, or its absence (underdevelopment). The same argument can be made for conflict short of war, such as with recent trends in the developed Western world, where the resurgence of populism, extreme nationalism and far right politics have similar roots. Put simply, conflict or organized violence has both intrinsic and extrinsic causes, and these are explored in the various chapters of this volume. The intrinsic causes are rooted in individual and group identity, as well as the mental framing of the history of injustice or discrimination. The extrinsic causes are pecuniary. They are related to the size of the economic pie (something that is determined by growth and development), but more importantly intimately connected to how this pie is distributed, raising questions of inequality.