by incidents perpetrated by actors from outside the villages, especially foreign groups linked to international terrorism (such as Boko Haram incursions from Nigeria). In particular, while severe conflict events remained quite rare, we find that their incidence increased by 0.63 percentage point, including a 0.41 percentage point increase in events involving terrorism and a 0.34 percentage point increase in events involving foreign terrorists.

We find that these effects are temporary: in the years after the end of the program, treated villages did not experience a persistently higher level of conflict events. In addition, we do not find evidence of local spillovers, as the cash transfer program did not affect the likelihood of conflict in nearby control villages relative to control villages further away. Lastly, using as a secondary data source a household-level survey in a subsample of villages, we show that (self-reported) within-village conflict events neither decreased nor increased during treatment.

Our results can be read through the lens of a framework with several countervailing forces (see the discussion in Rohner and Thoenig 2021): (i) productivity increases may raise the opportunity cost for locals of engaging in conflict; (ii) an increase in lootable wealth increases the “prize” that can be appropriated (both by local inhabitants as well as by foreign groups); (iii) international terrorist groups may have incentives to “sabotage” successful government-led poverty eradication programs which increase government legitimacy (see, e.g., Crost et al. 2014). Groups such as Boko Haram have indeed been observed to attack government services such as schools or health centers (see discussion below).

The interplay of these countervailing forces can account for the temporal patterns that we observe. In particular, during the program (when the cash payments took place), effects (ii) and (iii) may have gained traction, causing conflict to _increase_ . The scope for mechanism (i) seems more limited in the context of this paper, given that much of the observed violence stemmed from foreign groups. (Indeed, throughout the sample, the role played by home-grown violence was limited relative to violence perpetuated by foreign groups.) Also—if anything—we would expect this effect to occur with a lag (as it may take some time for cash transfers to be invested and raise productivity).

After the end of the program, both mechanisms (ii) and (iii) may have become less salient. Given that the government-led cash transfer program only lasted for two years, the scope for appropriation activities and the incentives to undermine the expansion of government presence may have receded after program completion in a given location. Further, the Niger cash transfer program has had well-documented medium-term impacts on economic welfare, income-generating activities, and assets (such as livestock) (Bossuroy et al. 2022; Stoeffler et al. 2020). To the extent that these effects raise the marginal productivity of labor, they are consistent with a higher (local) opportunity cost of conflict, which tends to reduce incentives to engage in conflict for domestic actors. While this effect may well have contributed to the demise of the conflict spike after the end of the program, its role may be moderate, given the dominant importance of foreign actors.

Our findings are related to the literature on the natural resource curse and on higher rents fueling conflict (see, e.g., the survey by Rohner 2018 and recent papers by Caselli et al. 2015; Berman et al. 2017; McGuirk and Burke 2020), as well as the literature on how higher or lower productivity and opportunity costs of conflict attenuate or fuel fighting, respectively (Miguel et al. 2004; Dell et al. 2014; K ̈onig et al. 2017; McGuirk and Burke 2020; Eberle et al. 2020).

Another relevant body of literature studies the impact on conflict of policy interventions that provide cash transfers or other forms of foreign aid (see also the surveys of Findley 2018; Rohner 2022). While earlier studies have focused on the country-year level (see, e.g., De Ree and Nillesen 2009, who found that foreign aid abbreviates conflicts), many recent studies have leveraged within-country variation. In particular, Nunn and Qian (2014) conclude, using a shift-share instrumentation strategy, that in-kind US food aid tends to increase the risk of conflict. Consistent with this, Crost et al. (2014) have found, 4