Can Hearts and Minds Be Bought? The Economics of Counterinsurgency in Iraq

A really interesting and convincing effort to analyze the question using quantitative data by Eli Berman from UC San Diego, Jacob N. Shapiro from Princeton University and Joseph H. Felter from Stanford. Details Iraqi responses to different types of violence (coalition/insurgent/sectarian) and tries to tease out trends and statistical relationships. No doubt involved countless hours of scrutinizing data and coding techniques, but the result seems to have been worth it. The pdf is available here.