SITE Seminar | Gold refining, downstream trade shock, and conflict: Evidence from the DRC
Join us for a SITE Seminar with Jing-Rong Zeng on how improved access to global gold markets can reshape armed conflict and local economic activity. Drawing on evidence from the eastern DRC, the study examines the effects of Uganda’s first industrial gold refinery on violence in gold-producing areas and along transport routes.
Working paper title: Gold Refining, Downstream Trade Shock, and Conflict: Evidence from the DRC
By: Diego Malo Rico & Jing-Rong Zeng
Abstract
We study how improved access to international commodity markets affects the spatial organization of armed conflict and local economic activity. The opening of Uganda's first industrial gold refinery in 2016 created a refining and export channel through which informally traded gold from the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) could reach international bullion markets. Using a difference-in-differences design that compares locations differentially exposed to predicted least-cost gold transport routes over 2011 -- 2020, we find that battle incidence increases both in gold-producing areas and along transport corridors after the refinery opens. We find no evidence of corresponding acceleration in forest loss or intensified nighttime lights. The results suggest that improved access to international markets increases the value of gold throughout the production and transport network, intensifying armed competition over those rents without generating commensurate increases in local economic activity. We find that after 2016, the corridors and artisanal gold mining sites draw in more armed actors and fragment control rather than consolidating it under a dominant actor; our findings suggest that peace processes should account for how changes in the economic value of resource trade can reshape the set of relevant armed actors.
About the speaker
Jing-Rong Zeng is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Paris School of Economics, where she works with Professor Oliver Vanden Eynde. She received her PhD in Economics from the Université Catholique de Louvain in 2025 under the supervision of Professor Joseph Gomes.
Her research lies at the intersection of political economy and development economics, with a particular focus on the political economy of civil conflict. Her work examines how economic conditions, international interventions, and institutional factors shape conflict dynamics and development outcomes.
Online via Zoom
Register here to join the seminar online.
About SITE
The Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) is a leading research and policy center on economic development in low-and middle income countries, with a particular emphasis on transition in the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe.
About the FREE Network
The Forum for Research on Eastern Europe and Emerging Economies (FREE Network) is a joint initiative by SITE (Stockholm), BEROC (Vilnius), BICEPS (Riga), CenEA (Szczecin), ISET-PI (Tbilisi), AUA (Yerevan), and KSE Institute (Kiev). Together, these research institutes form an extensive network of leading academic experts on economic issues in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
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