The conflict trap in the Greek Civil War 1946-1949: an economic approach

Nicos Christodoulakis

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The paper provides a quantitative analysis of the armed confrontation that took place in Greece between the Communist Party and the Centre-Right Government during 1946-1949. Using monthly data for battle casualties a dynamic Lotka-Volterra framework is estimated, pointing to the existence of a conflict trap that explains the prolongation of the civil war and its dire consequences for the country. To examine the extent to which the confrontation was influenced by socio-economic factors, a regional analysis finds that political discontent was mainly correlated with pre-war grievances rather than class-structure, while the mobilization of guerilla forces was crucially affected by morphology and the local persecutions by the Government. The economic cost of the conflict is estimated to be close to an annual GDP, and its effect to last for at least a decade, in line with similar findings in contemporary civil wars. The failure to prevent the conflict or stop its escalation is discussed together with some conclusions for the long term repercussions and the current social discontent in Greece.

Keywords: civil war; Greece; production function; equilibrium and stability condition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C62 E23 N44 O52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 72 pages
Date: 2014-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-mac
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/56228/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Conflict Trap in the Greek Civil War 1946-1949: An economic approach (2014)
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:ehl:lserod:56228

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().