We will be having an AMA on Monday April 18th at 2pm EST in /r/Askeconomics with Chris Blattman of the University of Chicago on his new book "Why We Fight".

Professor Blattman has provided this description of his work and book:

Blattman is an economist and political scientist who has worked in civil wars in East and West Africa, and with gangs in Medellin and Chicago. His new book looks at fighting of every kind, from civil conflicts in Africa, to gang wars in the Americas, to ancient Greece, to the World Wars, to the kinds of invasions we are seeing today in Ukraine.

In his book, he argues all these forms of fighting have common roots:

It’s easy to overlook the underlying strategic forces of war, to see it solely as a series of errors, accidents, and emotions gone awry. It’s also easy to forget that war shouldn’t happen—and most of the time it doesn’t. Around the world, there are millions of hostile rivalries, yet only a fraction erupt into violence, a fact too many accounts overlook.

With a counterintuitive approach, Christopher Blattman reminds us that most rivals loathe one another in peace. War is too costly to fight, so enemies almost always find it better to split the pie than spoil it for everyone or struggle over thin slices. In those rare instances when fighting ensues, we should ask: What kept rivals from compromise?

Why We Fight draws on decades of economics, political science, psychology, and real-world interventions to lay out the root causes and remedies for war, showing that violence is not the norm; that there are only five reasons why conflict wins over compromise; and how peacemakers turn the tides through tinkering, not transformation.

Blattman has also worked on poverty alleviation, cash transfers to the poor, and randomized control trials for poverty and violence reduction. He is also a longtime international affairs and development blogger.