This paper uses Synthetic Control Methodology to estimate the output loss in Tunisia as a result of the "Arab Spring." The results suggest that the loss was 5.5 percent, 5.1 percent, and 6.4 percent of GDP in 2011, 2012, and 2013 respectively. These findings are robust to a series of tests,...

This study estimates the impact of Kenya?s post-election violence on individual risk preferences. Because the crisis interrupted a longitudinal survey of more than five thousand Kenyan youth, this timing creates plausibly exogenous variation in exposure to civil conflict by the time of the...

In conflict-prone situations, access to markets is necessary to restore economic growth and generate the preconditions for peace and reconstruction. Hence, the rehabilitation of damaged transport infrastructure has emerged as an overarching investment priority among donors and governments. This...

Drawing on evidence from Africa - especially Ethiopia and Uganda - the authors of this volume draw conclusions about economic policy in the aftermath of civil war. A sample of conclusions follows. Civil wars differ from international wars. They are informal, often have no clear beginning and...

This paper uses data obtained from three Moroccan household surveys that took place between 2000 to 2013, to address issues related to the so-called "Arab puzzle." Welfare inequalities are low and declining in Arab countries and exist against the backdrop of a growing sense of dissatisfaction...

This paper studies welfare dynamics, especially changes associated with middle-class status in countries in the Middle East and North Africa, before and after the Arab Spring transitions, using objective and subjective welfare measures. Absent panel data, the analysis employs state-of-the-art...

This paper investigates the impact of political instability and civil conflict on firms. It studies the unrest in Cote d'Ivoire that began in 2000, using a census of all registered firms for the years 1998-2003. The analysis uses structural estimates of the production function and exploits...

This paper argues that state weakness is broader than implied previously in the civil war literature, and that particular types of weakness in interaction with natural resources have aggravating or mitigating consequences for the risk of civil war. While in anocracies or unstable regimes natural...

In a behavioral model of civil conflict, foreign military intervention alters the resources available to warring groups and their probability of winning. The model highlights the importance of distributional measures along with the modifying effect of the intervention for conflict incidence. The...

This paper presents evidence on the cost-effectiveness of early childhood education pathways in rural Indonesia. It documents the existence of substantial differences in school readiness between 6 to 9 year old children. Using detailed enrollment histories, it unpacks whether and how early...