Conflict has become an ever more pressing global problem, with record levels of armed conflict around the world in recent years. Rigorous empirical research on conflict is, however, relatively recent and important gaps in our understanding remain.
The Reducing Conflict and Improving Performance in the Economy (ReCIPE) programme, established in April 2024, aims to provide a better understanding of the links between conflicts, economic growth, and public policies. ReCIPE will support rigorous and quantitative research that investigates the following questions: how important is economic growth (or lack of growth) for fuelling conflict and fragility; how do different types of economic growth contribute to conflict; and how can economic policies be used to mitigate conflict. This includes a focus on nine research areas.
To achieve this goal, ReCIPE will fund research in a variety of ways, principally via a series of open calls for proposals. The programme will also organise and support a number of policy and academic events. ReCIPE will engage closely with the policy community to make progress towards identifying practical economic policies that can help reduce conflict. In addition, ReCIPE aims to be ‘question driven’, and so will encourage research grounded in economics but which incorporates key findings and approaches from other social sciences.
The ReCIPE programme is a CEPR initiative funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) for an initial five-year period as part of a new Growth Research Platform, which will incorporate the research activities and outputs from ReCIPE and its sister programmes Private Enterprise Development in Low-Income Countries (PEDL) and Structural Transformation and Economic Growth (STEG).
ReCIPE is implemented by CEPR, Dominic Rohner (Geneva Graduate Institute, CEPR) is the Research Director of the programme, and Oliver Vanden Eynde (Paris School of Economics, CNRS, CEPR) is the Head of Engagement of the programme.
The first call for grant proposals will be launched in 2025. More information on the application process will be available in the coming weeks.
ReCIPE supports the UN Global Compact and its principles. To find out more, please visit the UN Global Compact webpage.
The ReCIPE team can be reached at [email protected].