EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Persistent Consequences of Civil Conflict: Evidence from a New Measure for Subnational Conflict Exposure

Tobias Korn

Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) from Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät

Abstract: This paper presents a novel approach to accounting for subnational conflict exposure and provides new insights into the causal medium-run effects of conflict on economic development. The existing literature has not reached a consensus on whether civil conflict can permanently alter economic growth trajectories. This study identifies the source of this disagreement as differing methodologies in measuring conflict exposure. Commonly, researchers rely on subnational aggregates of conflict intensity, overlooking crucial intra-regional variation. To provide a more accurate assessment, this paper proposes measuring conflict exposure as the share of economic activity in proximity to conflict events. Estimating a Bartik-like IV model at the district level across 70 countries, I provide causal evidence that conflict exposure significantly decreases economic activity in the medium run. As potential channels, I identify persistent diversions of investments and human capital.

Keywords: civil conflict; conflict exposure; economic development; Bartik IV (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 O15 O43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 65 pages
Date: 2023-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://diskussionspapiere.wiwi.uni-hannover.de/pdf_bib/dp-711.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:han:dpaper:dp-711

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) from Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Heidrich, Christian ().

 
Page updated 2024-11-07
Handle: RePEc:han:dpaper:dp-711