Essays On The Economics Of Conflict And Political Violence

The three essays conforming this thesis are representative pieces of my approach to analyzing the causes and consequences of economic underdevelopment. The overaching topic that ties together these essays is role that institutions and culture play in affecting specific behaviors that undermine development. The approach to the questions addressed in each essay is empirical, using data from Per\'{u} and Sierra Leone, and relies on economic theory to provide a general framework and deepen our understanding of the observed behaviors. Below, I provide a more detailed summary of the main findings of each chapter in this thesis: In Chapter 1, ''Turnout, Political Preferences, and Information: Evidence from Perú'', I explore the role of electoral institutions that encourage citizens to vote on voter behavior. These institutions are widely used around the world, and yet little is known about the effects of such institutions on voter participation and the composition of the electorate. In this paper, I combine a field experiment with a change in Peruvian voting laws to identify the effect of fines for abstention on voting. Using the random variation in the fine for abstention and an objective measure of turnout at the individual level, I estimate the elasticity of voting with respect to cost to be -0.21. Consistent with the theoretical model presented in this essay, the reduction in turnout is driven by voters who (i) are in the center of the political spectrum, (ii) are less interested in politics, and (iii) hold less political information. However, voters who respond to changes in the cost of abstention do not have different preferences for policies than those who vote regardless of the cost. Further, involvement in politics, as measured by the decision to acquire political information, seems to be independent of the level of the fine. Additional results indicate that the reduction in the fine reduces the incidence of vote buying and increases the price paid for a vote. Chapter 2, ''Civil Conflict and Human Capital Accumulation: The Long Term Consequences of Political Violence in Perú'', analyzes the consequences of a long lasting civil conflict on human capital accumulation. In this chapter, I provide empirical evidence of the long- and short-term effects of exposure to political violence on human capital accumulation. Using a novel data set that registers all the violent acts and fatalities during the Peruvian civil conflict, I exploit the variation in conflict location and birth cohorts to identify the effect of the civil war on educational attainment. Conditional on being exposed to violence, the average person accumulates 0.31 less years of education as an adult. In the short-term, the effects are stronger than in the long run; these results hold when comparing children within the same household. Further, children are able to catch up if they experience violence once they have already started their schooling cycle, while if they are affected earlier in life the effect persists in the long run. I explore the potential causal mechanisms, finding that supply shocks delay entrance to school but don't cause lower educational achievement in the long-run. On the demand side, suggestive evidence shows that the effect on mother's health status and the subsequent effect on child health is what drives the long-run results. In the third and final chapter of this dissertation, "Transportation Choices, Fatalism, and the Value of Statistical Life in Africa", joint work with Edward Miguel, we take a look at the role culture plays in determining the willigness to pay to avoid life thretening situations. Specifically, we exploit a unique transportation setting to estimate the value of a statistical life (VSL) in Africa. We observe choices made by travelers to and from the airport in Freetown, Sierra Leone (which is separated from the city by a body of water) among transport options -namely, ferry, helicopter, speed boat, and hovercraft - each with differential historical mortality risk and monetary and time costs, and estimate the trade-offs individuals are willing to make using a discrete choice model. These revealed preference VSL estimates also exploit exogenous variation in travel risk generated by daily weather shocks, e.g. rainfall. We find that African travelers have very low willingness to pay for marginal reductions in mortality risk, with an estimated average VSL close to zero. Our sample of African airport travelers report high incomes (close to average U.S. levels), and likely have relatively long remaining life expectancy, ruling out the two most obvious explanations for the low value of life. Alternative explanations, such as those based on cultural factors, including the well-documented fatalism found in many West African societies, appear more promising.

Chapter 1 studies the impact of the arrival of displaced individuals on the wages of residents at receiving locations. To do this, the study employs an enclave IV strategy, which exploits both social distance between origin and destination locations and forced migration. I compare the effects on four different subgroups of the population, partitioned by skill (low-skilled versus high-skilled) and by gender. The analysis suggests that a conflict-induced increase in population leads to a short-run negative impact on wages, but that subsequent out-migration from receiving municipalities helps to mitigate these effects. Chapter 2 studies the relationship between political violence and congressional decision-making. I examine how politicians and their constituents respond to attacks by FARC, Colombia's largest rebel group, using data from politicians' Twitter accounts and roll-call voting records, and employing both an event study and a difference-in-differences research design. The analysis finds that tweets from incumbent politicians and tweets which exhibit "right-wing" language receive higher user engagement (a proxy for popular support) following rebel attacks. In congress, politicians were more likely to align their legislative votes with the right-leaning ruling party following an attack, before the government started negotiations with the rebels in 2012. However, this relationship breaks down after the start of the peace process. The empirical results are consistent with a political economy model of legislative behaviour in which events that shift median voter preferences, and the presence of rally 'round the flag effects, elicit different politician responses depending on the policy position of the ruling party. Chapter 3, joint work with Gustavo Bobonis and Roberto Castro, provides evidence of the long-term relationship between male-to-female spousal violence and the Oportunidades conditional cash transfer program in rural Mexico. It uses data from three nationally representative surveys that include detailed information on the prevalence of spousal abuse and threats of violence against women. Constructing comparable groups of beneficiary and nonbeneficiary households within each village to minimize potential selection biases, the analysis finds that, in contrast to short-run estimates, physical and emotional abuse rates over the long term do not differ significantly between existing beneficiary and nonbeneficiary couples.

Destructive conflicts have thwarted growth and development in South Asia for more than half a century. This collection of multi-disciplinary essays examines the economic causes and consequences of military conflict in South Asia from a variety of perspectives embracing fiscal, social, strategic, environmental and several other dimensions.

Presents the research on economic factors affecting peace and war. This title includes theoretical perspectives on the economic foundations of peace, violence and war within countries, connections between international trade and inter-state conflict, and the role of legal/institutional factors in international and internal conflict.

This collection of essays questions the adequacy of explaining today's internal armed conflicts purely in terms of economic factors and re-establishes the importance of identity and grievances in creating and sustaining such wars. Countries studied include Lebanon, Angola, Colombia and Afghanistan.

This Handbook brings together contributions from leading scholars who take an economic perspective to study peace and conflict. Some chapters are largely empirical, exploring the correlates and quantifying the costs of conflict. Others are more theoretical, examining the mechanisms that lead to war or are more conducive to peace.