Climate Shocks and Sino-nomadic Conflict
Abstract
Employing droughts and floods to proxy for changes in precipitation, this paper shows nomadic incursions into settled Han Chinese regions over a period of more than two thousand years—the most enduring clash of civilizations in history—to be positively correlated with less rainfall and negatively correlated with more rainfall. Consistent with findings that economic shocks are positively correlated with conflicts in modern sub-Saharan Africa when instrumented by rainfall, our reduced-form results extend this relationship to a very different temporal and geographical context, the Asian continent, and long historical period.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Climatologists have concluded that the deterioration of living conditions was a factor that encouraged the Mongol invasions (1219-1260).
“Climatologists have concluded that the deterioration of living conditions was a factor that encouraged the Mongol invasions (1219-1260).36,37”
From Climate change and Chinese history: a review of trends, topics, and methods (2015) · cites this paper as [37]
Cites
(2012) · American Economic Review · doi:10.1257/aer.102.2.i · Cited by 14,047 · see citing works
Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War
FEARON, J. D., & LAITIN, D. D. (2003) · American Political Science Review · doi:10.1017/s0003055403000534 · Cited by 7,366 · see citing works
On economic causes of civil war
Collier, P. (1998) · Oxford Economic Papers · doi:10.1093/oep/50.4.563 · Cited by 2,509 · see citing works
Economic Shocks and Civil Conflict: An Instrumental Variables Approach
Miguel, E., Satyanath, S., & Sergenti, E. (2004) · Journal of Political Economy · doi:10.1086/421174 · Cited by 2,460 · see citing works
Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy: (504012013-001)
Collier, P., Elliot, V. L., Hegre, H., Hoeffler, A., Reynal-Querol, M., & Sambanis, N. (2003) · PsycEXTRA Dataset · doi:10.1037/e504012013-001 · Cited by 2,431 · see citing works
On the Incidence of Civil War in Africa
Collier, P., & Hoeffler, A. (2002) · Journal of Conflict Resolution · doi:10.1177/0022002702046001002 · Cited by 779 · see citing works
The President and the Political Use of Force
Ostrom, C. W., & Job, B. L. (1986) · American Political Science Review · doi:10.2307/1958273 · Cited by 472 · see citing works
Elbadawi, I. A., & Sambanis, N. (2002) · Journal of Conflict Resolution · doi:10.1177/0022002702046003001 · Cited by 471 · see citing works
A Review of Recent Advances and Future Directions in the Quantitative Literature on Civil War
Sambanis, N. (2002) · Defence and Peace Economics · doi:10.1080/10242690210976 · Cited by 426 · see citing works
Rational Distributed Lag Functions
Jorgenson, D. W. (1966) · Econometrica · doi:10.2307/1909858 · Cited by 307 · see citing works
The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China.
Johnson, G. E., & Barfield, T. (1991) · Contemporary Sociology A Journal of Reviews · doi:10.2307/2076180 · Cited by 262 · see citing works
張, 家., 林, 之., & Tan, T. (1992) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 234 · see citing works
War Politics: An Economic, Rational-Voter Framework
Hess, G. D., & Orphanides, A. (1995) · American Economic Review · Cited by 220 · see citing works
The Pulse of Asia. A Journey in Central Asia Illustrating the Geographic Basis of History
Huntington, E. (1908) · Bulletin of the American Geographical Society · doi:10.2307/198844 · Cited by 58 · see citing works
Peace, War, and Trade along the Great Wall: Nomadic-Chinese Interaction through Two Millennia.
Waldron, A., Jagchid, S., & Symons, V. J. (1991) · The American Historical Review · doi:10.2307/2164168 · Cited by 56 · see citing works
Graff, D. A., & Higham, R. D. S. (2002) · Virtual Defense Library (Ministerio de Defensa) · Cited by 50 · see citing works
Climate Shocks, State Capacity, and Peasant Uprisings in North China during 25-1911 CE
Chen, Q. (2015) · Economica · doi:10.1111/ecca.12114 · Cited by 38 · see citing works
Cater, D. (1956) · The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science · doi:10.1177/000271625630700107 · Cited by 37 · see citing works
Growth, Democracy, and Civil WarPreprint
Ciccone, A., & Brückner, M. (2007) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.1028221 · Cited by 32 · see citing works
War and Human Capital in Western Economic Analysis
Kiker, B. F., & Cochrane, J. L. (1973) · History of Political Economy · doi:10.1215/00182702-5-2-375 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Quantifying the influence of climate on human conflict
Hsiang, S. M., Burke, M., & Miguel, E. (2013) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1235367 · Cited by 1,827 · see citing works
Social and economic impacts of climate
Carleton, T. A., & Hsiang, S. M. (2016) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aad9837 · Cited by 1,348 · see citing works
Burke, M., Hsiang, S. M., & Miguel, E. (2015) · Annual Review of Economics · doi:10.1146/annurev-economics-080614-115430 · Cited by 655 · see citing works
Hsiang, S. (2016) · Annual Review of Resource Economics · doi:10.1146/annurev-resource-100815-095343 · Cited by 573 · see citing works
Climate, conflict, and social stability: what does the evidence say?
Hsiang, S. M., & Burke, M. (2014) · Climatic Change · doi:10.1007/s10584-013-0868-3 · Cited by 342 · see citing works
Weather Shocks, Sweet Potatoes and Peasant Revolts in Historical China
Jia, R. (2014) · The Economic Journal · doi:10.1111/ecoj.12037 · Cited by 233 · see citing works
Long-term relationship between climate change and nomadic migration in historical China
Pei, Q., & Zhang, D. D. (2014) · Ecology and Society · doi:10.5751/es-06528-190268 · Cited by 95 · see citing works
Transhumant Pastoralism, Climate Change, and Conflict in Africa
McGuirk, E. F., & Nunn, N. (2025) · Review of Economic Studies · doi:10.1093/restud/rdae027 · Cited by 85 · see citing works
Climate change and Chinese history: a review of trends, topics, and methods
Fan, K. (2015) · WIREs Climate Change · doi:10.1002/wcc.331 · Cited by 56 · see citing works
Extreme weather events and military conflict over seven centuries in ancient Korea
Jun, T., & Sethi, R. (2021) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2021976118 · Cited by 16 · see citing works
- Authors
- Bai, Y., & Kung, J. K.-S.
- Affiliations
- Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HK)
- Venue
- Review of Economics and Statistics
- Publisher
- MIT Press - Journals
- Published
- 2011-08
- Volume
- 93
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 970-981
- ISSN
- 0034-6535 (ISSN-L)
- 1530-9142
- OpenAlex
- W2076595057
- Cited by
- 197
- References
- 20
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 20 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 14 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 14 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 14 · 2013: 7 · 2012: 4
- FWCI
- 9.70
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The Review of Economics and Statistics (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Rare & Special e-Zone (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Historical Economic and Social Studies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Transboundary Water Resource Management
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Political Conflict and Governance
- Keywords
- climate shocks, drought, floods, rainfall, rainfall variability, economic shocks, conflict, Han Chinese, nomadic peoples, climate history
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
