Human development is about expanding the choices human beings have to lead lives that they value and is captured by its capability sets which consist of various functioning vectors. The standard of living is then reflected in capability sets. This paper proposes some particular ways of measuring...

I study the causal effect of the foreign aid for development assistance —implemented by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)— on the intensity of municipality-level armed conflict in Colombia, for the period 2009-2013. To address potential endogeneity biases, I use a...

This chapter examines how cultural similarities (or differences) represented by common language roots affect economic activities. When individuals share some common linguistic repertoires, they are more inclined to develop commercial relationships and conduct business transactions than in the...

Are cultural differences good or bad for economic development? Can cultural differences generate conflicts and, therefore, retard economic development? Or can cultural diversity spur creativity and improve economic welfare? These are the type of questions that this chapter addresses. There are...

This paper shows that ethnically remote locations do not reap the full peace dividend from increased market access. Exploiting the staggered implementation of the US-initiated Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and using high-resolution data on ethnic composition and violent conflict for...

We study the effect of conflict on firms’ economic performance and explore the underlying mechanisms. Combining an original retrospective panel dataset of Libyan firms with geolocalized data on conflict events, we build a firm-specific measure of conflict exposure and use its within-firm...

We examine the effect of inter-group fiscal competition on within-group violent conflict. Using a triple difference design, we exploit exogenous variation in the degree to which villages in sub-districts compete for public funds. We find that higher competition between villages reduces conflict...

This study examines the impact of the Sierra Leone civil war on household expenditure inequality. The paper exploits three rounds of household survey data for Sierra Leone in an attempt to estimate the impact of the conflict on the distribution of household welfare over both short-run and...

Political polarization and lack of trust can greatly hamper the implementation of beneficial policies and broader economic development. Thus it is crucial to understand how to build trust, especially in polarized societies. We argue that carefully-designed exposure to trade in broad financial...

This study examines the effects of communal violence on women’s marital outcomes. Using individual-level survey data from India and a difference-in-differences approach, the study shows that women’s age of marriage decreased, and the probability of getting married before the age of 18...