IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-01638083.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Long Term Educational Cost of War: Evidence from Landmine Contamination in Cambodia

Author

Listed:
  • Ouarda Merrouche

    (EconomiX - EconomiX - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

The economic impact of war may be visible in the long run and particularly through its impact on human capital. This paper uses unique district level data on landmine contamination intensity in Cambodia combined with survey data on individuals to evaluate the long-run impact of Cambodia's 30 years of war (1970-1998) on education levels and earnings. These effects are identified using difference-in-differences (DD) and instrumental variables (IV) estimators. In the DD framework I exploit two sources of variation in an individual's exposure to the conflict: age in 1970 and landmine contamination intensity in the district of residence. The IV specification uses the distance to the Thai border as an exogenous source of variation in landmine contamination intensity. The most conservative result indicates that individuals who were too young to have attended school before the start of the war received on average 0.5 less years of education. And, immediately after the war there was no visible effect on earnings. The effects are therefore overall weak. I argue that the destruction of physical capital may be what contributes to drive down the returns to education in Cambodia post-war. The estimates reported may be very conservative due to both error in our measure of conflict intensity and possible selection bias in the placement of prosperous regions.

Suggested Citation

  • Ouarda Merrouche, 2011. "The Long Term Educational Cost of War: Evidence from Landmine Contamination in Cambodia," Post-Print hal-01638083, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01638083
    DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2010.485633
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Maurin, Eric & McNally, Sandra, 2005. "Vive la revolution! Long term returns of 1968 to the angry students," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 3656, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Massimo Guidolin & Eliana La Ferrara, 2007. "Diamonds Are Forever, Wars Are Not: Is Conflict Bad for Private Firms?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1978-1993, December.
    3. Ouarda Merrouche, 2006. "Economic Consequences of Wars: Evidence from Landmine Contamination in Mozambique," Economics Working Papers ECO2006/22, European University Institute.
    4. Jeffrey M Wooldridge, 2010. "Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 0262232588, April.
    5. Alberto Abadie & Javier Gardeazabal, 2003. "The Economic Costs of Conflict: A Case Study of the Basque Country," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 113-132, March.
    6. Andrea Ichino & Rudolf Winter-Ebmer, 2004. "The Long-Run Educational Cost of World War II," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(1), pages 57-86, January.
    7. Alberto Abadie & Javier Gardeazabal, 2001. "The Economic Costs of Conflict: A Case-Control Study for the Basque Country," NBER Working Papers 8478, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Pitt, Mark M & Rosenzweig, Mark R & Gibbons, Donna M, 1993. "The Determinants and Consequences of the Placement of Government Programs in Indonesia," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 7(3), pages 319-348, September.
    9. Banerjee, Abhijit V. & Duflo, Esther, 2005. "Growth Theory through the Lens of Development Economics," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 7, pages 473-552, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ouarda Merrouche, 2006. "Economic Consequences of Wars: Evidence from Landmine Contamination in Mozambique," Economics Working Papers ECO2006/22, European University Institute.
    2. Stefano DellaVigna & Eliana La Ferrara, 2010. "Detecting Illegal Arms Trade," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 26-57, November.
    3. Massimo Guidolin & Eliana La Ferrara, 2010. "The economic effects of violent conflict: Evidence from asset market reactions," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 47(6), pages 671-684, November.
    4. Ouarda Merrouche, 2007. "Landmines, Poverty and Recovery: Instrumental Variables Evidence from Mozambique," Working Papers 200709, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    5. Hönig, Tillman, 2017. "The Impact of Peace: Evidence from Nigeria," MPRA Paper 83302, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Mr. Philip Barrett, 2018. "The Fiscal Cost of Conflict: Evidence from Afghanistan 2005-2016," IMF Working Papers 2018/204, International Monetary Fund.
    7. François-Xavier Delaloye & Michel Habib & Alexandre Ziegler, 2012. "Swiss banking secrecy: the stock market evidence," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 26(1), pages 143-176, March.
    8. Akresh, Richard & Lucchetti, Leonardo & Thirumurthy, Harsha, 2012. "Wars and child health: Evidence from the Eritrean–Ethiopian conflict," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 330-340.
    9. Claudia Custodio & Bernardo Mendes & Diogo Mendes, 2021. "Firm responses to violent conflicts," NOVAFRICA Working Paper Series wp2106, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics, NOVAFRICA.
    10. Vincenzo Galasso, 2020. "Market Reactions to Quest for Decentralization and Independence: Evidence from Catalonia," CESifo Working Paper Series 8254, CESifo.
    11. Dennis Shen & Peng Ding & Jasjeet Sekhon & Bin Yu, 2022. "Same Root Different Leaves: Time Series and Cross-Sectional Methods in Panel Data," Papers 2207.14481, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2022.
    12. Timothy Besley & Hannes Mueller, 2012. "Estimating the Peace Dividend: The Impact of Violence on House Prices in Northern Ireland," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 810-833, April.
    13. Reshad N. Ahsan & Kazi Iqbal, 2020. "How does violence affect exporters? Evidence from political strikes in Bangladesh," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 599-625, August.
    14. Gul, Tayyeba Gul & Hussain, Anwar Hussain & Bangash, Shafiqullah Bangash & Khattak, Sanam Waghma Khattak, 2010. "Impact of Terrorism on Financial Markets of Pakistan (2006-2008)," MPRA Paper 41990, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Mukhopadhyay, Abhiroop & Sahoo, Soham, 2016. "Does access to secondary education affect primary schooling? Evidence from India," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 124-142.
    16. Bautista, M. A. & González, F. & Martínez, L. R. & Muñoz, P. & Prem, M., 2020. "Chile’s Missing Students: Dictatorship, Higher Education and Social Mobility," Documentos de Trabajo 18163, Universidad del Rosario.
    17. Francesco Amodio & Michele Di Maio, "undated". "Making Do with What You Have: Conflict, Firm Performance and Input Misallocation in Palestine," Development Working Papers 379, Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, University of Milano.
    18. Fernanda Marquez-Padilla & Francisco Perez-Arce & Carlos Rodriguez-Castelan, 2015. "The (Non-) Effect of Violence on Education Evidence from the "War on Drugs" in Mexico," Working Papers WR-1082, RAND Corporation.
    19. Jinglong Zhao, 2024. "Experimental Design For Causal Inference Through An Optimization Lens," Papers 2408.09607, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2024.
    20. Michał Marcin Kobierecki & Michał Pierzgalski, 2022. "Sports Mega-Events and Economic Growth: A Synthetic Control Approach," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 23(5), pages 567-597, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    [No keyword available];

    JEL classification:

    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development
    • O55 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Africa

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01638083. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.