Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED)

"The ACLED dataset codes exact locations, dates, and additional characteristics of individual battle events in states affected with civil war. There is a specific focus on tracking rebel activity and distinguishing between territorial transfers of military control from governments to rebel groups and vice versa, and the location of rebel group bases, headquarters, strongholds and presence. The dataset also records one-sided violence on civilians by both government or rebel actors and conflicts between rebel groups." (Cited from the above website)

Countries included in the dataset are all countries in Africa and India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar. For other countries, the ACLED website provides the list of datasets (potentially) available.

The sample period starts from 1997.

Comparison to other cross-country conflict datasets can be found here.

Comparison to other conflict datasets for Nigeria and South Africa is available here.

Use in economics research

• Hariri and LaFerrara (2013) estimate the impact of weather shocks on conflict events in Africa.
• Rohner et al (2013) estimate the impact of conflicts on trust and ethnic identity in Uganda.
• Besley and Reynal-Querol (2014) estimate the impact of pre-colonial conflicts on post-colonial conflicts in Africa.
• Michalopoulos and Papaioanou (2015) estimate the impact of ethnic groups being partitioned by the national border on conflicts in Africa.
• The list of other research articles using the dataset can be found here.

Data from Sri Lankan Microenterprise Project (2005-2010)

A panel survey of microenterprises (invested capital of about 1000 US dollars or less) in Kalutara, Galle, and Matara districts of Sri Lanka, conducted quarterly from April 2005 to April 2007, further followed up in October 2007, April 2008,  and June and December 2010.

See section II.A of de Mel et al. (2008) for detail.

Downloadable from Chris Woodruff's website.

Agricultural price distortions

The Political Economy of Agricultural Pricing Policy (Volume 4): A Synthesis of the Economics in Developing Countries by Maurice Schiff and Alberto Valdes (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992) provides agricultural tax rates by crop for various developing countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cote d'Ivoire, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Ghana, South Korea, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Philippines, Portugal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey, Zambia) annually from the early 1960s to the mid 1980s. See Appendix of the book.

As an update to this study, Anderson and Valenzuela (2008) at the World Bank estimate 30 commodity-specific indicators of the policy-induced divergence between domestic and international prices in 68 countries since 1955. This data is used by Block (2010) to explain the agricultural total factor productivity in sub-Saharan Africa.

World Bank's Rural Investment Climate Surveys

Conducted in Sri Lanka and Indonesia (Jan/Feb of 2006). Individual households/enterprises are geo-referenced.

Sri Lanka DHS

The 1987 DHS survey data on educational attainment in Sri Lanka is used by Adrienne M. Lucas "Malaria Eradication and Educational Attainment: Evidence from Paraguay and Sri Lanka" (forthcoming in AEJ:Applied).