Abstract: Economic resources are often seen as decisive for the outcomes of military conflicts. This paper asks whether "deeper pockets'' help win wars. We construct a fine-grained dataset covering more than 700 interstate disputes and rely on exogenous resource price shocks to estimate the causal effect of financial windfalls on winning chances in interstate conflicts. We find a statistically significant and quantitatively large impact of windfalls on winning odds and show that a key channel of transmission is a surge in military spending.

Discussant: Dominic Rohner (Geneva Graduate Institute).

Contact: Micole de Vera.

Chair: Micole de Vera.

Location: Meeting room DG Economics.

Timetable: 2025.10.20 (15:30-16:30).