The Fiscal Cost of Conflict : Evidence from Afghanistan 2005-2016 /

I use a monthly panel of provincially-collected central government revenues and conflict fatalities to estimate government revenues lost due to conflict in Afghanistan since 2005. I identify causal effects by instrumenting for conflict using pre-sample ethno-linguistic share. Headline estimates are...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor Principal: Barrett, Philip
Formato: Revista
Idioma:English
Publicado: Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, 2018.
Series:IMF Working Papers; Working Paper ; No. 2018/204
Acceso en liña:Full text available on IMF
Descripción
Summary:I use a monthly panel of provincially-collected central government revenues and conflict fatalities to estimate government revenues lost due to conflict in Afghanistan since 2005. I identify causal effects by instrumenting for conflict using pre-sample ethno-linguistic share. Headline estimates are very large, implying total revenue losses since 2005 of USD 3bn, and future revenue gains from peace of about 6 percent of GDP per year. Reduced collection efficiency, rather than lower economic activity, appears to be the key channel. OLS estimates understate the causal effect by a factor of four. Comparing to estimates from Powell's (2017) generalized synthetic control method suggests that this bias results from omitted variables and measurement error in equal share. The findings underscore the considerable economic loss due to conflict, and the importance of careful identification in measuring this loss.
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Descrición Física:1 online resource (79 pages)
Formato:Mode of access: Internet
ISSN:1018-5941
Acceso:Electronic access restricted to authorized BRAC University faculty, staff and students