Theme Leaders
The economic impact of conflicts is heterogeneous across countries and types of conflict, operates through different mechanisms, and leads to different adjustment strategies. Understanding the drivers and mechanisms behind conflict is essential for the design of policies.
Theme 2 will focus on the following topics:
- Private sector, labour markets, and conflict. More micro data on firms and workers in conflict-affected countries is needed to understand the linkages between conflict and the private sector, as well as the impact of public or private investment on firms.
- Investment in education and conflict. While education might be an important factor for preventing conflict, causal evidence for the link between long-run investments and conflict activity is mixed and inconclusive.
- Health, demography, and conflict. Conflict has well known negative effects on public health, but the reverse direction of causality (whether disease and epidemics lead to increased conflict prevalence) is much less well-understood. Similarly, more evidence is required on the mechanisms operating between demographic factors and conflicts; and on the scope for public policy intervention in health infrastructure, as a mean of reducing conflict.