The more wealth a society accumulates, the more likely it is to descend into deadly violence.
April 16, 2026
Original Paper
Violence and Capital
SSRN · 6462341
The Takeaway
We have long assumed that economic growth and saving 'pacify' nations by giving everyone something to lose. This paper argues the opposite: capital accumulation actually increases conflict by inflating the 'survival prize.' When there is a massive pile of productive assets to be seized, the payoff for a coup or a civil war becomes irresistible. It suggests that development doesn't just create prosperity; it creates a target. This means that without very specific institutions to manage wealth, 'getting rich' actually makes a society more dangerous. For us, it’s a reminder that peace isn’t a byproduct of wealth, but a separate and much more fragile achievement.
From the abstract
In standard growth models, saving and capital accumulation are unambiguously good for development. We show that this is no longer true when we allow for deadly conflict, which determines who survives and controls a country's productive capacity. We derive three results. First, shocks that encourage saving can raise violence by inflating the survival prize, shocks that make it harder to seize what others have built reduce violence, and technology shocks that raise productivity have no long-run ef