IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hic/wpaper/210.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effect of Civilian Casualties on Wartime Informing: Evidence from the Iraq War

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Shaver

    (Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University)

  • Jacob N. Shapiro

    (Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Department of Politics, Princeton University)

Abstract

Scholars of civil war and insurgency have long posited that insurgent organizations and their state enemies incur costs for the collateral damage they cause. We provide the first direct quantitative evidence that wartime informing is affected by civilian casualties. Using newly declassified data on tip flow to Coalition forces in Iraq we find that information flow goes down after government forces inadvertently kill civilians and it goes up when insurgents do so. These results confirm a relationship long posited in the theoretical literature on insurgency but never directly observed, have strong policy implications, and are consistent with a broad range of circumstantial evidence on the topic.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Shaver & Jacob N. Shapiro, 2016. "The Effect of Civilian Casualties on Wartime Informing: Evidence from the Iraq War," HiCN Working Papers 210, Households in Conflict Network, revised Oct 2016.
    • Handle: RePEc:hic:wpaper:210
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.hicn.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/HiCN-WP-210.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2016-02
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.hicn.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/HiCN-WP-210-updated.pdf
    File Function: Revised version, 2016-10
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Greenstone & Rema Hanna, 2014. "Environmental Regulations, Air and Water Pollution, and Infant Mortality in India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(10), pages 3038-3072, October.
    2. Shapiro, Jacob N. & Weidmann, Nils B., 2015. "Is the Phone Mightier Than the Sword? Cellphones and Insurgent Violence in Iraq," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 69(2), pages 247-274, April.
    3. Gary Solon & Steven J. Haider & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2015. "What Are We Weighting For?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(2), pages 301-316.
    4. A. Colin Cameron & Jonah B. Gelbach & Douglas L. Miller, 2008. "Bootstrap-Based Improvements for Inference with Clustered Errors," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(3), pages 414-427, August.
    5. Eli Berman & Michael Callen & Joseph H. Felter & Jacob N. Shapiro, 2011. "Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Philippines," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 55(4), pages 496-528, August.
    6. Luke N. Condra & Joseph H. Felter & Radha K. Iyengar & Jacob N. Shapiro, 2010. "The Effect of Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq," NBER Working Papers 16152, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Luke N. Condra & Jacob N. Shapiro, 2012. "Who Takes the Blame? The Strategic Effects of Collateral Damage," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(1), pages 167-187, January.
    8. Vidya Diwakar, 2015. "The Effect of Armed Conflict on Education: Evidence from Iraq," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(12), pages 1702-1718, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christoph Mikulaschek & Saurabh Pant & Beza Tesfaye, 2020. "Winning Hearts and Minds in Civil Wars: Governance, Leadership Change, and Support for Violent Groups in Iraq," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(4), pages 773-790, October.
    2. Michael A. Rubin, 2020. "Rebel Territorial Control and Civilian Collective Action in Civil War: Evidence from the Communist Insurgency in the Philippines," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 64(2-3), pages 459-489, February.
    3. Andrew Shaver, 2016. "Information and Communication Technologies, Wartime Informing, and Insurgent Violence," HiCN Working Papers 215, Households in Conflict Network.

    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. Andrew Shaver & Jacob N. Shapiro, 2021. "The Effect of Civilian Casualties on Wartime Informing: Evidence from the Iraq War," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 65(7-8), pages 1337-1377, August.
    2. Austin L. Wright, 2016. "Economic Shocks and Rebel," HiCN Working Papers 232, Households in Conflict Network.
    3. Marco Manacorda & Andrea Tesei, 2020. "Liberation Technology: Mobile Phones and Political Mobilization in Africa," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(2), pages 533-567, March.
    4. Tähtinen, Tuuli, 2024. "When Facebook Is the Internet: The Role of Social Media in Ethnic Conflict," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    5. Fernando Broner & Paula Bustos & Vasco Carvalho, 2011. "Sources of comparative advantage in polluting industries," Economics Working Papers 1331, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Dec 2019.
    6. Crost, Benjamin & Felter, Joseph H. & Johnston, Patrick B., 2016. "Conditional cash transfers, civil conflict and insurgent influence: Experimental evidence from the Philippines," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 171-182.
    7. Anna Sokolova & Todd Sorensen, 2021. "Monopsony in Labor Markets: A Meta-Analysis," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 74(1), pages 27-55, January.
    8. Viard, V. Brian & Fu, Shihe, 2015. "The effect of Beijing's driving restrictions on pollution and economic activity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 98-115.
    9. Bahar, Dany & Ibáñez, Ana María & Rozo, Sandra V., 2021. "Give me your tired and your poor: Impact of a large-scale amnesty program for undocumented refugees," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    10. Gröger, André, 2021. "Easy come, easy go? Economic shocks, labor migration and the family left behind," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    11. Garth Heutel & Christopher J. Ruhm, 2016. "Air Pollution and Procyclical Mortality," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(3), pages 667-706.
    12. Chen, Jidong & Shi, Xinzheng & Zhang, Ming-ang & Zhang, Sihan, 2024. "Centralization of environmental administration and air pollution: Evidence from China," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    13. Pérez Pérez, Jorge, 2020. "The minimum wage in formal and informal sectors: Evidence from an inflation shock," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    14. Aydemir, Abdurrahman B. & Kırdar, Murat Güray & Torun, Huzeyfe, 2022. "The effect of education on internal migration of young men and women: incidence, timing, and type of migration," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    15. Timothy Allen Carter & Daniel Jay Veale, 2015. "The timing of conflict violence: Hydraulic behavior in the Ugandan civil war," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 32(4), pages 370-394, September.
    16. Noury, Abdul G. & Speciale, Biagio, 2016. "Social constraints and women's education: Evidence from Afghanistan under radical religious rule," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(4), pages 821-841.
    17. Elisabetta Calabresi, 2024. "“Don’t Leave Me Alone†: Unilateral Divorce and Intimate Partner Violence," Working Papers - Economics wp2024_17.rdf, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa.
    18. Guido Neidhöfer & Miguel Niño‐Zarazúa, 2019. "The Long(er)‐Term Impacts of Chile Solidario on Human Capital and Labor Income," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 45(S1), pages 209-244, December.
    19. Han, Dan, 2023. "The impact of the 340B Drug Pricing Program on Critical Access Hospitals: Evidence from Medicare Part B," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    20. Gallagher, Emily A. & Gopalan, Radhakrishnan & Grinstein-Weiss, Michal, 2019. "The effect of health insurance on home payment delinquency: Evidence from ACA Marketplace subsidies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 67-83.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hic:wpaper:210. 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: Tilman Brück or the person in charge or the person in charge or the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hicn.org/ .

    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.