. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2022 Sep 6.

Published in final edited form as: Econometrica. 2020 Mar;88(2):727–797. doi: 10.3982/ECTA13734

Table IV:

Precolonial Population Diversity and the Occurrence of Historical Conflicts across Countries

Historical period:	1400–1799	1400–1499	1500–1599	1600–1699	1700–1799	1400–1799	1400–1499	1500–1599	1600–1699	1700–1799
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)	(8)	(9)	(10)
	OLS	OLS	OLS	OLS	OLS	Probit	Probit	Probit	Probit	Probit
	Number of conflict onsets in historical period					Onset of any conflict in historical period
Population diversity (precolonial)	16.336^*** (4.264)	13.561^*** (3.425)	10.919^*** (3.603)	9.878^*** (3.127)	6.456^** (2.801)	18.211^*** (5.799)	35.761^*** (6.754)	17.266^*** (6.241)	17.622^*** (5.745)	12.508^** (5.297)
Region dummies	×	×	×	×	×	×	×	×	×	×
Controls for geography	×	×	×	×	×	×	×	×	×	×

Observations	155	155	155	155	155	155	155	155	155	155
Partial R² of population diversity	0.104	0.136	0.087	0.064	0.039
Adjusted R²	0.354	0.367	0.356	0.251	0.231
Pseudo R²						0.248	0.374	0.285	0.224	0.213
Effect of 10th–90th %ile move in diversity	31.725^*** (8.281)	8.352^*** (2.109)	7.603^*** (2.508)	5.911^*** (1.871)	2.826^** (1.226)	0.541^*** (0.098)	0.631^*** (0.045)	0.515^*** (0.097)	0.560^*** (0.085)	0.430^*** (0.118)

Notes: This table exploits cross-country variations to establish a significant positive reduced-form impact of indigenous (precolonial) population diversity on (i) the number of conflict onsets (Columns 1–5); and (ii) the likelihood of observing one or more conflict onsets (Columns 6–10), either during the entire 1400–1799 time period (Columns 1 and 6) or in each century therein (Columns 2–5 and 7–10), conditional on the baseline geographical correlates of conflict. The controls for geography include absolute latitude, ruggedness, distance to the nearest waterway, the mean and range of agricultural suitability, the mean and range of elevation, and an indicator for small island nations. The set of region dummies includes four indicators for Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and North Africa, Europe and Central Asia, and South Asia. The estimated effect associated with increasing population diversity from the tenth to the ninetieth percentile of its cross-country distribution is expressed in terms of either the number of conflict onsets (Columns 1–5) or the percentage-point increase in the likelihood of a conflict onset (Columns 6–10) during the time period examined by the regression. Heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors are reported in parentheses.

^***

denotes statistical significance at the 1 percent level,

^**

at the 5 percent level, and

at the 10 percent level.