The Reducing Conflict and Improving Performance in the Economy (ReCIPE) programme is a CEPR research initiative funded by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCDO) and will support rigorous and quantitative research looking at the underlying relationship between economic growth and conflict and fragility. The programme focuses on conventional armed conflict as well as terrorism and extremism. ReCIPE will also analyse conflict between the state and armed groups, between non-state groups, and between criminal actors. The programme is part of the FCDO-funded Growth Research Platform, which brings together two other FCDO projects, PEDL (see https://pedl.cepr.org/) and STEG (https://steg.cepr.org/) together with a Policy Response Window.

ReCIPE will fund research in a variety of ways, principally via a series of open calls for proposals, similar to the PEDL and STEG programmes. The programme will also organise and support a number of policy and academic events.

The programme aims to make progress towards identifying practical economic policies that can help reduce conflict, and so will engage closely with the policy community through various activities and policy products.

ReCIPE is focused around nine key themes, which will investigate how incentives for conflict are shaped and how potent economic policies can reduce the scope for fighting and thereby promote prosperity:

  1. Public policies for peace
  2. Private and public investments and peace
  3. Institutions, democracy and peace
  4. Geoeconomics
  5. Climate change, natural resources and conflict
  6. Information and conflict: From the role of (social) media and public opinion to big data and forecasting
  7. Ethnic diversity and nation-building
  8. Peacemaking, peacebuilding and reconstruction
  9. Gender, inequality and conflict

Professor Dominic Rohner is the Research Director of ReCIPE and the programme is implemented by CEPR.
Professor Oliver Vanden Eynde is the Head of Engagement for the ReCIPE programme.

The programme commenced in April 2024, with the first competitive call for proposals to commence in spring 2025.

The ReCIPE team can be reached at [email protected]