Battles and Diseases in the U.S. Civil War

Guillaume Vandenbroucke

No 2024-032, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Abstract: Wars create short-term fluctuations in mortality. Belligerents might mitigate their own casualties with larger armies that hinder their opponent’s fighting ability. But diseases are frequent in wars and, thus, may reduce the benefits of larger armies. First, I analyze these competing mechanisms in a dynamic model of wartime attrition. Second, I calibrate the model using U.S. Civil War data and find that if the Union had fielded a 50%-larger army in 1861, Union casualties would have been marginally lower. The theory provides the insight for this quantitative result.

Keywords: war; attrition; diseases (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E6 H56 N4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2024-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
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DOI: 10.20955/wp.2024.032

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