Behavior

The COVID-19 pandemic caused extensive food insecurity in low-income countries. However, most studies rely on aggregate-level exposure measures, overlooking individual-level heterogeneity and introducing measurement errors that limit causal inference. To overcome these gaps, we examine the impact of COVID-19 exposure on food security in four African countries – Uganda, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, and Mozambique – […]

Using large-scale phone survey data collected throughout 2021 in four African countries (Uganda, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, and Mozambique), this paper examines the impact of COVID-19 exposure on food security.  The authors, including ISDC’s Damier Esenaliev, Ghassan Baliki, Wolfgang Stojetz, and Tilman Brück, introduce a micro-level measure of ‘COVID-19 exposure’ and use a heteroskedasticity-based IV method […]

30 September – 1 October 2026 in Berlin, Germany Fragile Lives convenes international experts from academia, policy, and practice on the use of rigorous evidence to study the drivers, dynamics, and impacts of poly-crises. The conference focuses on lives and livelihoods shaped by crises such as violent conflict, humanitarian emergencies, and the climate crisis. Fragile […]

The journal article ‘Shocking social safety: Evidence from violence and drought in North-East Nigeria‘ has been published in Food Policy. This paper, authored by Wolfgang Stojetz, Piero Ronzani, Jeanne Pinay, Marco d’Errico, and Tilman Brück, brings new empirical evidence on how overlapping shocks affect households’ social safety nets. Armed conflict and climate-related stressors – such […]

Polycrises created by violent conflict and climate change are ubiquitous. Yet, the impacts of conflict and climatic shocks on human behavior and welfare have largely been studied in isolation. This paper studies the joint impact of conflict and climatic shocks on households’ social safety nets in fragile settings. Drawing on unique panel survey data from […]

Daria is a Junior Researcher in the Behavior Research Program at ISDC. She is a grassroots strategist and community-based researcher with more than a decade of experience in civil society leadership in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia. Her commitment, practice and research focus on fostering sustainable and resilient futures in Kyrgyzstan and across Central Asia. Previously […]

When refugees flee abroad, they carry the legacy of their traumatic experiences across borders. While there are over 43 million refugees worldwide, the long-term effects of conflict exposure on their well-being remain poorly understood. This paper examines how pre-displacement exposure to violent conflict and environmental stressors shapes the long-term social well-being of Syrian refugees in […]

This paper provides evidence on the impacts of armed conflict and climate change on individual labor intensity. Based on pooled labor force survey, climate, and conflict event data from 21 African countries, we document that climate change and armed conflict can create a polycrisis: the negative impacts of extreme climate events on labor intensity in […]

About the conference Fragile Lives 2025 is the second edition of an annual international expert conference focused on using rigorous, scientific evidence to inform policy interventions in fragile, conflict-affected, and underdeveloped settings. It will take place on 30 September and 1 October 2025 at Humboldt University in Berlin. This year’s central theme is: Gender, Institutions, […]

This project aims to generate and share new, micro-level insights into the patterns, drivers, and consequences of polarization in Kyrgyzstan.

ISDC’s Behavior Research Program analyses how people, households and groups cope with major shocks to lives and livelihoods. We study how experiencing these shocks shapes choices, preferences and coping strategies, and contributes to wellbeing at the individual and household levels, as well as how they aggregate through society as a whole. Human development faces its […]

This project will assess the adverse conditions and challenges facing crisis-affected populations in Türkiye and Syria.

When refugees flee violent conflict, they carry the legacies of their experiences across borders. Using representative survey data from refugees living in Jordan, we examine how pre-displacement exposure to violent conflict shapes the long-term social well-being of refugees.

With over 43 million refugees worldwide, the long-term effects of conflict exposure on their social well-being remain underexplored. This is your chance to uncover the hidden legacies of conflict and understand how they shape the lives of refugees. Join us for a thought-provoking webinar that examines how pre-displacement exposure to violent conflict affects the long-term […]

With over 43 million refugees worldwide, the long-term effects of conflict exposure on their social well-being remain underexplored. This is your chance to uncover the hidden legacies of conflict and understand how they shape the lives of refugees. Join us for a thought-provoking webinar that examines how pre-displacement exposure to violent conflict affects the long-term […]

Timur Cipa is a Researcher in ISDC’s Behavior Research Program. His research interests lie in political economy and development economics, with a particular focus on the intersection of climate change, conflict, and development. At ISDC, Timur’s current work explores how multidimensional crises in Sudan affect livelihoods and how interventions can support affected populations. Before joining […]

This paper studies the social protection of refugees during a pandemic. A pandemic adds to the many existing challenges refugees face, creating a dangerous polycrisis. Drawing on detailed household-level data collected by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees just before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, we analyse the economic impacts of granting work permits […]

This paper provides empirical micro-level evidence on the gendered impacts of armed conflict on economic activity in agriculture and other sectors, combining large-N sex-disaggregated survey data with temporally and spatially disaggregated conflict event data from 29 African countries. We find that local conflict exposure is only weakly related to labour-force participation, but strongly reduces the […]

Polycrises created by violent conflict and climate change are ubiquitous. Yet, the impacts of conflict and climatic shocks on human behavior and welfare have largely been studied in isolation. This paper studies the joint impact of conflict and climatic shocks on households’ social safety nets in fragile settings. Drawing on unique panel survey data from […]

This paper provides novel evidence on the impacts of agricultural support programs in acute emergency settings, by studying resilience in mostly rural areas in the context of a multi-package intervention in conflict-affected Borno State, North-east Nigeria. We account for the challenging research environment in this insecure setting by carefully adapting our research design, thus generating […]

ISDC is conducting an impact evaluation of a joint program for nearly 300,000 people in South, Central, and North Darfur, applying its expertise in causal analysis in crisis settings.