Suchergebnisse

Using a panel data set from Burundi where information on protection payments during the twelve-year civil war was collected, we test the relationship between payments, the nature of extraction by the rebels, and the welfare outcomes. We ask, "Does payment to rebels insure against future welfare loss and does the nature of payment matter? Specifically, does the level of institutionalization of extraction within the rebel governance structure provide a form of insurance for future welfare?" No less than 30 percent of the interviewees made at least one payment. Rebels extract these taxes through one of the following two routes: an "institutionalized" and regular cash-with-receipt method or an ad hoc and unpredictable labor extraction. Using matching methods, we find that payment through the institutionalized route increases household welfare between 16 and 25 percent. Ad hoc extraction has no effect. We situate our findings in the empirical literatures on contributions to mafia-type organizations and rebel governance.

This paper models the instability of peace agreements, motivated by the empirical regularity with which peace agreements tend to break down following civil war. When war provides opportunities for profit to one side, or when other difficulties such as historical grievances exist, peace may become incentive incompatible. The party that has something to gain from surprise warfare may agree to peace, but will later renege on it. It is shown that the levels of conflict chosen by this group are an increasing function of both grievance and greed, but decreasing in the direct costs of war. Peace is achievable via externally devised mechanisms that enhance commitment to peace. Aid and direct military peacekeeping intervention (sanctions) can reduce or eliminate conflict. These sanctions, however, need to be credible. Finally, the independent provision and finance of international sanctions are considered. When these arrangements yield little benefit to financial sponsors, or are very costly to them, the bite of the sanctions can become ineffective.

We combine household survey data with event data on the timing and location of armed conflicts to examine the impact of Burundi's civil war on children's health status. The identification strategy exploits exogenous variation in the war's timing across provinces and the exposure of children's birth cohorts to the fighting. After controlling for province of residence, birth cohort, individual and household characteristics, and province-specific time trends, we find that children exposed to the war have on average 0.515 standard deviations lower height-for-age z-scores than non-exposed children. This negative effect is robust to specifications exploiting alternative sources of exogenous variation.

AbstractThe civil war in Burundi (1993–2005) led to the forced displacement of a large part of the population. This study aims to explore how that displacement affected fertility behavior. Using a nationally representative, retrospective survey on birth and residential histories of 4,523 Burundian women, we examine the impact of conflict‐induced displacement on fertility. These unique data enable us to distinguish between remaining‐in‐place, voluntary migration, and forced displacement, as well as to distinguish between periods spent "on the move" versus periods spent in residence in the new site. Adopting a semiparametric regression model, we analyze both the probability of the first pregnancy and the subsequent spacing of higher order pregnancies. We find that the risk of a first pregnancy was higher in the year in which a woman was forcibly displaced and lower in the year a woman migrated voluntarily. Residency in a new site increased the risk of pregnancy for both.

In our brief review, we take stock of the emergence, in the last decade, of the "microeconomics of violent conflict" as a new subfield of empirical development economics. We start by de-bunking common misperceptions about the microeconomics of conflict and identify several contributions to economic theory and, in particular, to empirics, methods and data. We also show how the subfield is enriched through cooperation with scholars working in related disciplines. We expect future work to contribute inter alia to the evidence base on peacebuilding interventions, the development of post-conflict institutions, the behavior of firms in conflict areas and the role of emotions in decision-making. We note a disconnect between the rapidly evolving academic subfield on the one hand and the relatively limited use of knowledge thus generated by humanitarian and development organisations and policy makers working in and on conflict-affected areas. We conclude by suggesting that teaching in economics and the discipline-specific JEL codes have not yet kept pace with this recent intellectual development.

This paper investigates the food security and nutritional status of formerly displaced households (HHs). Using the 2006 Core Welfare Indicator Survey for Burundi we compare their food intake and their level of expenses with that of their non-displaced neighbours. We test whether it is the duration of displacement that matters for current food security and nutritional status or the time lapsed since returning home. We use log-linear as well as propensity score matching and an instrumental variable-approach to control for self-selection bias. We find that the individuals and HHs who returned home just before the time of the survey are worse off compared to those who returned several years earlier. On average, the formerly displaced have 5 per cent lower food expenses and 6 per cent lower calorie intake. Moreover, we find evidence in favour of duration of displacement as the main mechanisms through which displacement affects HH welfare. Results are robust after controlling for self-selection bias. Despite international, government and NGO assistance, the welfare of recent returnees is lagging seriously behind in comparison with the local non-displaced populations. ; SCOPUS: ar.j ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published