conflict and development Flashcards
Deaths Resulting From Conflict Since WWII
o Between World War II and 2015 there were:
▪ 22 interstate conflicts with more than 25 deaths, 9 of which had more than 1,000 deaths (3-8million deaths in total)
▪ 240 civil conflicts with more than 25 deaths, more than half of which had more than 1,000deaths (5-10 million deaths in total)
▪ There were over 25 million direct civilian deaths, about four times as many indirect deaths, and about 60 million forcibly displaced
Are Civil Wars Relevant for Development Economics?
▪ The vast majority of current and recent civil wars are taking place in low-income countries
▪ Countries in the “bottom billion” face a risk of1/6 of falling into civil war in any 5-year period
▪ There are clear correlations between conflict and key indicators of development
Development in Reverse – Burundi and Burkina Faso
o Until the early 1990s, per capita incomes and growth in Burkina Faso and Burundi were similar
o In Burundi, extreme violence broke out in the 1990s betweenHutu and Tutsi ethnic groups
o Burundi lost two decades of income growth, setting GDP back to 1970 levels
o Burkina Faso now has GDP per capita more than 2.5 times that of Burundi
likely causes if (avoiding) civil conflict is a determinant of economic growth and development
1: Conflict declines with economic development
▪ What about reverse causality?
2: Conflict is created by economic inequality
▪ This is certainly the case in high-income countries in the past few centuries. Is it still the main driver now?
3: Conflicts in developing countries are based on ethnic differences
▪ If so, is conflict even an economic problem?
Do Economic Factors Lead to Conflict?
o Poorer countries face a higher risk of experiencing civil conflict - but why might this relationship be causal?
o Generally speaking, there are two counter-acting effects which might link economic development to conflict:
▪ Economic growth creates a larger pot to fight over - rapacity, but at the same time, it raises the opportunity cost to fighting
Other evidence that economic conditions cause conflict
o A seminal paper by Miguel et al. (2004) looks at the effect of economic growth on conflict in 41African countries between 1981-1999
o As these economies rely heavily on rain-fed agriculture, they deal with the problem of reverse causality by using changes in rainfall between t and t-1, and t-1 and t-2 as instrumental variables for economic growth
o They find that a five‐percentage‐point negative growth shock increases the likelihood of a civil war the following year by nearly one‐half
Is Conflict Driven by Inequality?
o Given that revolutions in the 20th century were driven by economic differences it seems reasonable to assume that wealth or income inequality would lead to conflict
o The evidence is much more nuanced, however, with a recurrent observation that conflict appears to be quite low for both low and high values of inequality
Why might we see little evidence of inequality causing conflict?
With inequality…
▪ The rich have the means but not the motive to engage in conflict
▪ The poor have the motive but lack the means
▪ The dominant form of rich/poor struggle may be more akin to Marxian social unrest—strikes, demonstrations, etc.—rather than armed civil war, i.e., events often not captured by conflict data
Why does evidence suggest that conflict usually occurs across economically similar groups
o This is often related to scarce resources that are explicitly and directly contested:
Ray and Estaban (2017)
▪ A limited pool of jobs
▪ Scarce faming and grazing land
▪ The same customers
o Because this type of conflict is over the direct use of a specific resource, the groups are often quite similar in their economic characteristics
o The losses and gains from conflict are immediate:
▪ The losing group can be excluded from the sector in which it directly competes with the winners
Are Ethnic Differences the Main Driver of War?
o Recent conflicts in developing countries have often been organized along ethnic lines
o Specifically, many conflicts appear to be largely ethnic, geographical, and religious in nature
o However, there is debate on whether ethnicity or religion is the actual driver of civil conflict, or a means by which groups can be organized to participate in conflict – with the real reason being to gain access to resources
o For example, Mitra and Ray (2014) find that what outwardly appears to be ‘religious conflict’ between (poorer, minority) Muslims and (majority) Hindus in India is linked strongly to changes in relative incomes
o Hindu–Muslim violence in India increases with a rise in Muslim per capita income, and falls with increases in Hindu per capita income – rapacity and opportunity cost?
o There is also a widely held view that past European colonisation causes conflict by creating ethnically fractionalised states
Does the ‘splitting up’ of ethnic groups across countries cause conflict today?
o This is the question considered in Michalopoulos and Papaioannou (2016)
▪ They used the delineation of African borders in late 19th century when Europeans had not yet settled in (most of) Africa and had limited knowledge of its political and economic geography
▪ Borders were mostly drawn as straight lines!
▪ Today, 80% of African borders follow latitudinal or longitudinal lines
o Europeans completely ignored pre-colonial ‘states’: ethnic territories
o The result was many partitioned ethnicities
▪ Around 43% of African population lives in ethnic territory that is intersected by a national border
o If ethnicity is related to conflict, then these partitioned ethnicities should experience a higher likelihood of conflict
The Long-Run Effects of the Scramble for Africa
The results of empirical analysis were as follows:
o The incidence, severity, and duration of political violence are all higher for partitioned ethnicities
o They also experience more frequent military interventions from neighbouring countries and conflict spillover
o Split ethnicities are often entangled in a vicious circle of government-led discrimination and ethnic wars
o Members of partitioned ethnicities have fewer household assets, poorer access to utilities, and worse educational outcomes, as compared to individuals from non-split ethnicities – even in the same country
Causal effect of conflict on economic development - Direct costs
o Loss of life - often a substantial share of the working age labour force (more commonly men)
o Destruction of physical capital/assets – E.g., no cattle were left in Northern Uganda after theLRA insurgency
o Uncertainty makes many economic activities less/non-profitable
o Instability and uncertainty greatly undermines domestic and foreign investment
Causal effect of conflict on economic development - Indirect costs
o Disease - Forced migration and life in refugee camps increase the spread of diseases and mortality rates dramatically (Montalvo and Reynal-Querol, 2007)
o Food insecurity - Malnutrition contributed to stunting among children in Uganda led to stunting, potentially affecting future adult productivity (Bridges and Scott, 2021)
o Lost schooling and human capital - Girls affected by conflict in Tajikistan were significantly less likely to obtain secondary education (Shemyakina, 2006)
o Poverty - in Rwanda, 20% of the population moved into poverty following the1994genocide (Justino and Verwimp, 2013)
Earlier studies into the long-term effects of conflict often did little to address:
▪ Measurement error
▪ Omitted variables
▪ Endogeneity
