The Elusive Peace Dividend of Development Policy: From War Traps to Macro-Complementarities

Dominic Rohner and Mathias Thoenig

No 15574, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This paper reviews the literature on civil conflict and development with an angle on the socio-economic consequences of violence and promising policies for fostering peace. We make four main points. First, one of the reasons why conflict is still often overlooked as key factor for development is that conflict costs are typically under-estimated, in particular for shadow costs of deterrence. Second, there are several types of war-traps that hold countries back -- both economically and politically. Third, for breaking these traps, policies must be calibrated to address jointly both poverty and social tensions, there being a strong macro complementarity between peace and development objectives. We document how "single-minded" policies that ignore this dual challenge can spectacularly fail, and discuss in depth a series of particularly promising policies. Fourth, we highlight the increasing potential of novel data collection methodologies and the need of policy evaluation tools in violent context.

Keywords: Conflict; Civil war; Poverty; Development; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 F51 H56 O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15574 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: The Elusive Peace Dividend of Development Policy: From War Traps to Macro Complementarities (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:15574

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15574

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().