Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
We present a new index of social unrest based on counts of relevant media reports, covering 130 countries monthly starting in 1986. Spikes in the index identify major events, which match event timelines from external sources for four major regional waves of social unrest. We assess our index against others and show it performs as well as the next best alternative but with superior coverage. Social unrest is associated with a 3 percentage point increase in the frequency of social unrest domestically and a 1 percent increase in neighbors in the next six months. Despite this, social unrest is not a better predictor of future social unrest than the country average rate. We investigate economic performance around unrest events, showing that (1) macroeconomic performance is not robustly correlated with subsequent unrest and (2) after unrest events, positive output surprises are smaller but negative ones unchanged.